


Counting Weeds

by RapidashPatronus



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (As usually I try), Angst, Bechdel Test Pass, F/M, Fluff, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Some minor Rebel Rising spoilers, many feelings, more tags to come as I go I should think, there will be animals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2018-11-18 02:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11281971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RapidashPatronus/pseuds/RapidashPatronus
Summary: Cassian wants to get back to fighting. Jyn is tired and wants a break. Neither of them looks like getting what they think they want.





	1. Seed

“We owe you a great deal,” the princess sighed. “If that’s what you want, then of course.”

Jyn looked around, at the young princess, at the senator in white, at the grim-faced general, at their expressions of disappointment and – worse – concern. “Just get me onto a ship and I’m out of your way.”

“We can –”

“I’m not here for payment. Just a ship.”

“We understand your position,” said Draven, his low voice measured, less sharp than when he’d interrogated her – when? days ago? a lifetime? – “but please grant me the opportunity just to make clear that you are welcome with us. The Rebellion would be grateful of skills and attributes such as yours. We don’t underestimate what it’s taken you to do what you’ve done.”

A beat. “Sorry.” She felt, rather than saw, how the three of them sank a little.

“We can get you placed with an identity on one of the farming worlds in the Outer Rim in just over a week,” Leia said sadly. Mon Mothma remained silent, a gleaming white column of solemn regret.

And she meant it, she reflected as she walked out. She  _ was _ sorry. But she’d died for Saw and died for herself, died even for the Empire back on Five Points and now she’d died for the Rebellion too. She was done with dying for a long time. She’d learned enough to know there was nowhere beyond the reach of the Empire; Outer Rim or not, they came just the same. But she’d make it last for as long as she could, and she’d do it right, this time. None of the mistakes she made before.

The crumbling corridors of the ziggurat were humming with activity – rebel staff packing all they could, planning the switch-off of the systems, droids whirring past carrying loops of cabling, the grey and red insulated guts of an entire operation. They’d be out and off the moon not long after she was, running from the Empire just like her.

Except they were still doing something about it.

She shook the admonition away in irritation. She’d done plenty. Nobody could say she hadn’t. Who could even try to keep going after –?

Who,  _ apart _ from the man walking past her now toward the room she’d just left, his back less straight than she knew it could be, his gait nonetheless determinedly even, and his face, hard-edged and lined with ill-disguised pain, not turning to her for a second.

Apart from him.

She hesitated, glanced over her shoulder in time to see Cassian vanish around the corner. She wasn't about to call after him. She didn't need to see him look at her like that again. The disappointment from the princess and the others just now had been nothing to what she'd felt from him. It should make it easier to go. It should.

She turned and leaned against the wall, resting her head back on the rough, ancient stone. It dug into her scalp and it felt like the whole building was telling her to walk on. The low ceiling caught her groan and defracted it mercifully into the low buzz of another passing droid.

He had no right to expect anything of her. She'd only ever done as she needed. It put them on the same side, for a while, was all. And if he'd let himself think - she didn't have to justify herself to him.

A passing technician shot her an enquiring look and seemed to consider pausing to offer help. More obsequious concern from some idealist who wanted a hero. She closed her eyes until she heard his pace quicken again and fade.

Yavin was a sticky, sweaty ruin she'd be glad to leave behind; the humidity clung still more oppressively as they shut down the cooling systems sector by sector. Even the stone at her back felt as warm as breath.

Jyn contemplated moving off again, but she wasn't sure where. She couldn't quite face visiting the other survivors in the medbay until it was time to say goodbye - perhaps not even then. The place was thick with pilots from the battle and there was no privacy, no way to tell those she had fought with that the fight was now over for her. Again, she thought with indignation of that look of disappointment they'd be sure to give her, sadness like a stab wound, and no, she wouldn't put them through it.

Another passer-by, another glance of curious concern. That was the thing, how kriffing  _ concerned  _ everybody looked. Of course, the real letdown for everyone was that she’d lived, and intended to go on doing so. A martyr was so much more in keeping, wasn’t it, and now they had to deal with someone alive and so weren’t they all unnerved, weren’t they all just  _ wishing _ she’d come spectacularly apart. Everything was so big for the devout; the thought it wasn’t big enough to wipe her out must have been such an insult to them.

Well, surviving was what she did. Surviving, she believed in; anything more, and she’d seen how believing could twist people. Flying razors in a ballroom. Enough to dream about for a lifetime, there, thanks. So, no, she wasn’t going to come undone now just to please them.

Force, they’d bleed you dry if they could. They’d done their best work on Cassian, hadn’t they.

There came the sound of a step that was too measured to be natural and she cursed herself for staying where she was, but if she made off now he’d only see her going. Then Cassian rounded the corner once more and it was too late anyway.

He stopped when he reached her, looking straight ahead.

“Waiting for me?”

She eyed his profile silently, the rock still cutting into the back of her head.

He sighed, and turned to her. “Jyn.” He sounded nothing more than resigned, looked nothing more than tired.

Jyn looked him up and down briefly, taking in his fractionally lopsided bearing, the way he shifted his weight onto one leg, then met his eyes.

“What did they say?”

“They’re wrong,” he told her.

She pushed herself forward off the wall. “What did they say?”

He shook his head slightly, and Jyn wasn’t sure how but suddenly they were walking. If they were both heading back to their rooms, they were going in the same direction - the residential sector was some way from here. Side by side like this was easy, like a habit, already; but with the long weight of silence, the familiarity jarred.

“Leave,” he spat, and for a moment, she thought it was an order. But he went on. “Extended leave of absence. I’m fine.”

_ You’re not _ , she thought.

“I know,” she said. She wondered how long it was since Cassian had last done nothing at all. Talk about kicking someone when they were down. “So - you said no.”

He scoffed. “I don’t get a choice.”

“What will you do?” And for a wild, insane moment, she almost said  _ come with me _ . But she knew better than to think he could ever pull the wires of this machine from his veins. They really would bleed you dry. She stole another glance at him; he licked his lips and winced, minutely, and she looked away.

She wondered if the electric fence that ran between them was obvious to the technicians and pilots that went by them as they walked. Carrying their loads, preparing for retreat. Perhaps not. But then, they had no comparison.

He still hadn’t responded when they rounded the next corner..

“What will you do?” she asked again.

Cassian suddenly put his arm out, halting her in her tracks, and stepped in front of her. He looked down at her with a face like stone and acid. “Still more than you,” he rasped.

She stared as he turned and stalked away, and she felt the sting of what she chose to call injustice.

 

\--

 

Five days gone. Three to go. Jyn had begun a mental list of the things she hated about this place.

She hated the damp heat that twisted her hair and made her clothes stick to her so she had to change twice a day, and how every time she did, she had to change into an exact copy of the exact same pale brown shirt from the stack she’d found dumped in her bunk, none of which were quite the right size or shape, and she hated that that annoyed her.

She hated her room, small and strangely shaped, with the grey bed that was long enough to lie straight in and the metal desk with drawers in which she no possessions to put, and she hated how small that made her feel.

She hated that every time she left her room, there were people. People fetching, people carrying, people studying plans, people giving orders, orders, orders. People looking at her - at least, now, with dislike, rather than with concern. News had spread, and she hated that they dared judge her.

She hated the food. It was better than endless nutritive milk, better than protein straws, better than ration cubes, better than months of bunn. It was hot and varied, and the next meal was always enough and was always guaranteed, and she was leaving it, and so she hated it.

She hated the walls of ancient stone and brittle steel patched unevenly with newer durasteel. They were yellow, yellower still with age, and in the oldest, deepest, stalest parts of the ziggurat they hung and glistened with sweat. Further out, they channeled what passed for fresh air, nothing but the stench of swamps and rotting vegetation, and she hated that there was no in between.

She hated Cassian. She couldn't imagine what life would be for him with no purpose, no mission. He was all drive; reluctant, regretful, yes, but she knew what it was to be defined by action. But her sympathy had turned sour when he took his uselessness out on her. It wasn’t her fault. She hated that unbidden thought:  _ come with me _ . She hated that he dared make her feel guilty, make her explain to herself that she wasn't.

She liked not seeing him when she stayed in her room.

So she hated his unexpected arrival at her door.

Jyn stared at him sullenly as the door slid open, and rested her hand on the lintel above. He looked her over.

“I need to come in.”

After a beat, she shrugged and stepped aside. He looked around as he walked in stiffly - injury or uncertainty, she couldn't tell.

Unmade bed, a collection of cups on the floor: she was willing to bet his room was as far from this as he seemed from her. She noticed one of the cups still held the dregs of an old caf, dark and clouded, clawing its way across its own surface to gather in a pale grey film.

Cassian stood in the middle of the room, hands held behind his back, legs apart. Officer stance, perhaps. Or just an easier weight distribution. She tipped her head on one side and gestured impatiently.

“I think I owe you some sort of thanks for trying,” he said suddenly.

Jyn raised an eyebrow. Trying? She knew immediately that he couldn't be talking about what they had achieved together on Scarif. Whatever gulf there might be between them now, even he wouldn't dismiss that so callously.

“It's better than nothing,” Cassian went on. “I won’t take it, but I just want you to know I'm not ungrateful.”

His formality hung from him awkwardly, but not without sincerity, and Jyn felt unsteady. What was he referring to? What code was this?

Were they being watched?

Despite the humidity, a chill ran down her as she realised how likely that was.  _ Of course. Play along. _ It meant he was trying to tell her something. Were they on the same side again?

“You're welcome,” she said lightly.  _ I’m with you _ . “It's your decision, obviously. I just thought.”  _ But I don't understand. _

He gave a curt nod. “Well, as I said, I'm not ungrateful. But I’m not taking the offer.” Then his expression sharpened. “And now keep out of it.”

Whatever he was telling her, she couldn't read it.

“I know.”  _ What do you need? _ “I overstepped. Sorry.”  _ Help me out, Cassian. _

He stared at her for a second, and then with a sigh, he sat down on the side of her bed, face turned to the ceiling. How quickly they moved between states.

“I'm not your problem, Jyn,” he said, and he sounded tired again, the formality draining away. “Nothing here is your problem. You’ve got three days and then you’re not ours either.”

Ours? He clearly assumed she was following this.

“So… what  _ is _ my problem?”  _ I don't understand. _ It occurred to her then that perhaps this was not a code after all, and sure enough, just like that, he was knife-cold again.

“I wish I knew,” he bit back.

“Listen,” she bristled, “you sound pretty ungrateful to me, whatever it is. I didn’t ask you here.”

“I didn’t ask you to weigh in on my job. We’re even.”

She wasn’t going to give ground now, confused as she was. Jyn headed back to the door and hit the panel. He glowered at her as it slid open, but made no move.

There was a silence, thickened by the heat.

"It's more than a suggestion," she told him, waving at the corridor outside. "If you're not my problem, you can go. Wherever it is you go when you've got nothing else to do... Where  _ is  _ that, exactly?"

She knew it was a vicious payback, watching his jaw set darkly in response, and finally Cassian stood and made to leave. But he paused in the doorway, looking past her.

"I know you meant well," he said. "But I'm more use to this fight than... than counting weeds in the Mid Rim."

“Not right now," she replied. But it came out softer than she meant it to, and then he was gone, and she was staring at the closed door, unfinished and uncomprehending.

 

\--

 

In her windowless room, the afternoon crept on like a headache. The bedsheets tangled and stuck underneath her when she tried to lie down, but the thought of going for a walk and seeing people was abhorrent.

For want of anything else to do, she straightened the bed, re-folded the stack of identical brown shirts and trousers on the table, and shoved the cups into one of the drawers. Slamming the drawer too hard, though, resulted in a clattering sound; the dark grey dregs of caf started drizzling through the bottom onto the hard floor below. Jyn cursed and pulled off her shirt to mop up, but when she was done and grabbed a new shirt, the newly folded stack toppled off the table in disarray. She cursed again and kicked the chair, which only hurt her foot, and as it tipped it landed on top of the crumpled heap of clothes, compounding the disaster.

It was nothing. It was funny. It should have been funny.

Instead, Jyn howled. She dragged the sheets off the bed in a passion and threw them across the room, then fell amid the chaos with a groan, clawing at her sweat-sheened face.

What was he even  _ talking  _ about?

Well, Cassian’s wounded pride wasn’t her problem. He’d said so himself. Still, she was fascinated. He clearly thought that this new offer - better, apparently, but still insulting - was somehow her doing, and she was morbidly curious to know exactly what it was that he thought she actually cared enough to do for him after he’d spoken to her the way he had.

She wiped her face with the nearest bit of the sheet to her hand and pulled a shirt from under the chair.

There were probably systems in place by which you could secure an appointment to see his grizzled commanding officer. Jyn hit the control panel; the door slid open and she headed out into the corridor, dodging a passing R2 unit as she fastened her shirt. Screw systems.

She marched down the corridor and turned abruptly at each corner, sighing ostentatiously at each person who happened to be in her way, ignoring their growls of irritation and dislike in return. One woman dropped her box of circuitry in alarm as she veered to avoid Jyn; she heard the woman grumbling to herself, scrabbling to pick up the circuits as she left her behind. Then -

“Hey!” the woman called out suddenly. Jyn kept walking. “Hey!” came the voice again, and the sound of running. A hand landed on Jyn’s shoulder. “Hey!”

Jyn rolled her eyes and turned. “Yes?”

The woman was even shorter than she was, and dropped her hand quickly as Jyn faced her. She looked eager, if hesitant, the sweat shining almost blue on her round face.

“I just - you’re -” She glanced momentarily over her shoulder at the pile of circuitry she’d abandoned behind her, then back at Jyn. “Jyn Erso? I just wanted to say thanks,” she said. “And good luck. With everything.”

Jyn gave a start, stepping back and staring at the woman’s outstretched hand.

“Thanks,” she muttered, shaking it quickly. “You too, I guess.”

The woman nodded, a flash of a shy smile, and then retreated to gather up her scattered boxload of technology. Jyn blinked hard and shook her head, turning back and resuming her route march.

Someone who didn’t blame her.

It felt worse.

Further into the ill-lit arteries of the base, the sickly heat was punctured periodically by blasts from the coolers not yet shut down; there was no adjusting to it like this, and it felt full of the breath of everyone that had lived here for - how long, she wondered? How long had it taken to build all that which now they tore down in their haste to flee? The denizens were fewer by the day, the corridors ever barer.  It was almost sad. She knew all about running.

The general’s office was somewhere along here, she remembered. Here, the doors were mostly open, the rooms beyond them hollowed out, shells rattling only with inessential furniture. Another century or two, and perhaps the vines would push this far in, too, reclaim what remained in a heavy green embrace.

The intelligence quarter, of course - the highest priority for removal. First out, and these rooms had been empty for days. She wondered how long they had left now, how many data centres still to deactivate, how much time until the Empire returned to mop up.

One still-closed door stood far along the left hand side of the corridor. Jyn bit her lip and knocked.

There was no answer, and suddenly she was uncertain of why she had come at all. What did it matter to her what Cassian’s newest insult was?

She kicked the door spitefully and sat down to wait beside it, her back to the wall. Of course it mattered. It mattered still more now she was leaving. There had been panic, purpose, some sort of partnership. That sort of thing didn’t just go away. So for all that she wanted freedom, and for all that he had wanted to tie her down, a life of knowing that he - wherever he might be - had lost the meaning of his: she knew it was not a life she could dream of in comfort.

She sat and waited, ready to plead on Cassian’s behalf as he believed she already had. Such misplaced faith in her, even now.

Finally, Draven rounded the corner, scanning through something on his data pad. He faltered only a fraction when he noticed her, but impassively, he tapped open the door and nodded her inside.

His office was dim; backup power only now in this sector, and a crunching noise through the wall of some machine somewhere nearby being unhooked, euthanised. The door slid shut at her back, and he turned to face her.

“What can I do for you now, Erso?”

She gripped her hands tightly behind her back. Something about him always made her nervous. She lost all power of equivocation under his gaze; the only way to meet it without quailing was directly. So she told him, “You can’t decommission Cassian.”

“We’re not,” Draven replied, his worn face registering no reaction at all. “And as an individual with no current affiliations to our unit, that information alone is more than you’re entitled to.”

“Don’t give me that,” she said, hating the quaver in her voice that betrayed her. “I’m entitled to ask for a great deal more than I have. Ensuring the wellbeing of a soldier I fought beside is not something I will accept as too great a request.”

She knew her choice of words was too impersonal, a dead giveaway, but still he showed no trace of his thoughts as he eyed her levelly. Finally, he folded his arms, seeming to reach a decision.

“After careful consideration, we recognise that Captain Andor” - the emphasis stung somehow - “requires some level of activity and focus in order to help bring him back to full health. Until that time he is of no use in his former endeavours.”

_ I could have told you that. He did tell you that. Careful consideration, my - _

“A history of achievement such as you share is uncommon,” he went on. “So whatever you may believe to the contrary, Erso, I do fully appreciate your personal concern for him.” At last, she detected something in his expression - fleeting, infinitesimal, a flash of something too fast to identify. “Please trust that my priority and that of the Alliance is to see him return to active service as soon as is reasonably possible.”

She snorted ironically. “Well, you wouldn’t want to lose out for too long on a useful resource.”

“We would not.” He didn’t flicker.

“Well,” she shrugged, “he doesn’t seem too happy about whatever you’ve dreamt up in the meantime.”

“Then perhaps you can persuade him.”

Jyn pursed her lips, swallowing her confusion.

“Andor’s unsuitability for action goes beyond the physical,” he continued. “As much as he might disagree, he needs time to recover away from direct conflict.”

She nodded silently. It felt like betraying him to agree. “And?”

“I gather you’ve seen the impacts of the Empire’s industrious mining activities for yourself.”

She nodded again. Planets hollowed out, mined to death, their shells infertile and uninhabitable. It was a concept she could never have imagined had she not seen it over and over.

Draven inclined his head slightly. “Some contacts of ours have established a conservation unit on a planet in the Ginqou system, for species endangered or outright displaced.” He gave the shadow of a wry smile. “I’ve been told it’s valuable work. What galaxy do we fight to liberate if we don’t care for it, after all?”

Conservation? Valuable work? It sounded like a script, coming out of this man’s war-scarred mouth. No wonder Cassian had felt insulted. Counting weeds, he’d called it, and she suddenly understood his outrage, the sting it must have been to his pride. And yet -

And yet it appealed. There had been a time, years ago, when she had marvelled over all she didn’t know about the galaxy; all the things she had never had the time or opportunity to see; living things that would live or die by the hand of those with power and never know how or why; a tiny, fragile creature with leaves in its bones; yellow petals falling gracefully (don’t look to where they redden as they land); even the vines that she knew would one day constrict these walls, and had come within a moment of being so much dust in space.

“He won’t do it,” she said.

“As I said,” Draven replied evenly, “you might persuade him.” He unfolded his arms and made a gesture of dismissal. “He knows his options.”

Jyn tried to hold his gaze a moment longer, but he turned away and repeated the gesture.

She was halfway out of the door when she stopped. “Sir -”

“I’m not “sir” to you, Erso.”

“How do I volunteer?”


	2. Confined

_ Come with me _ .

In better words, in better reasoning. She detailed the rationale, cited the justification, explained how much better his chances would be if he’d play along, just play along, show willing for a bit, prove his readiness by their rules; it was only sensible, only reasonable. A whole night’s worth of constructing and redrafting went at last, in cool-lit blue, from her screen to his: a precision-engineered manifesto of perfect logic.  _ Come with me _ .

Six days gone; two to go.

There was no message in response, no sound at her door; she didn’t see him when she left her room for food. Perhaps he’d already left. Jyn waited in expectation, in fury, in resolute indifference.

Seven days gone; one to go.

Still neither answer nor acknowledgement. It wasn’t her problem, she told herself again. The repetition was meant to reinforce the words, not chip away like this until they were hollow.

Eight days gone; time. She gave up.

It wasn’t like she had to pack. There was a habit she’d learnt while on the move: always check under the bed, always check every drawer. But she had had nothing to put under the bed, and she had no wish to re-encounter the mouldy cups in the drawer. She considered, in a vague notion of helpfulness, stripping the bed, and dismissed it. It would only be left behind. The cups in the drawer would never be disturbed. After tomorrow, the moon would be home again only to itself, leeching its way proprietorially back into the stone edifice that had been, for so long, the Rebels’ hive.

She took one of the hated brown shirts and tucked it under her arm, giving one final, pointless glance around the room, as the door slid open. She hadn’t had many chances to bid farewell to a place she’d slept; detestable and lonely the room may have been, but still, this marked another end.

Jyn stepped out into the corridor, now almost deserted. An engineer had not long since passed her door and was making off toward another sector further in. She headed off in the opposite direction, outward, toward the heavying stink of the swamps, toward the last contact between her feet and this wretched, sweltering rock.

She knew she was a little late, but she couldn’t feel troubled by it, as she walked without haste through the dim backup lighting. With the hum of machinery gone in this sector, her borrowed boots echoed dully against the coarse walls. Soon, though, other paths converged with hers nearer the hub of activity, others walking alongside and ahead, more purposefully, on the same route as her, on their way to load transports with what remained of the base.

Finally, she reached the hangar. Even with activity all around, it seemed so much bigger and barer than last she’d seen it. Time to go, then. Jyn looked around and spotted the tiny shuttle she sought - and something jolted in her.

Cassian was standing by the ramp, holding his bag and looking around; when he spotted her, he visibly relaxed. She quickened her pace.

“Started to think you weren’t coming,” he murmured as she approached, and incredibly, there was a trace of something gentle in the lines around his eyes.

“Bit rich,” she shot back, heading past him. At the last moment, though, she hesitated and turned. He watched her carefully as she stepped back down the ramp and faced him.

A long moment passed, still but full; finally she reached out and grabbed his bag with a brisk sigh. “Come on.”

Behind her, as she stomped back up the ramp, he gave a last look around the hangar - around his home - and then followed her into the shuttle.

The shuttle seemed even tinier on the inside. There were two narrow bunks jutting from each side, a cupboard under each of the lower ones; a door at the rear looked like it led to some minuscule semblance of a fresher, while at the front, with no divider, was the pilot's seat, in which sat a broadly-built woman with wild sandy hair.

She twisted around as Cassian pulled up the ramp and closed the port. "Ready for the off?" she called cheerfully. Jyn sat down heavily on the side of her bunk and nodded. She flung Cassian's bag over onto the bunk opposite and he sat down, his knees almost knocking hers.

The tiny shuttle lurched forward, then bounced, rather than glided, into the air. Jyn toppled backwards onto her bunk and Cassian’s arm shot out for a moment - steadying himself, she assumed.

“Sorry about that,” chuckled the pilot over her shoulder as the ship hauled its way above the steaming jungle canopy. “The goold old Sneezy Flea here has a rather unique flight pattern.”

“The Sneezy Flea?” Cassian echoed. Jyn noticed him gape at the pilot in disbelief and she quickly put her hand over her mouth.

“Oh, sure,” the pilot answered, hoisting them further into the sky with a jolt, and Jyn bit back a laugh at Cassian’s expression of growing incredulity. “She’s reliable as they come; likes a bit of a dance, is all. Jump to lightspeed’s the jumpiest you’ll know but she’s a runner, Captain.” The pilot flipped a switch. “We’ll be on Pentroca in two days.”

Jyn’s mirth vanished instantly. “Two  _ days _ ?”

The pilot twisted round in her seat with a grin. “Cosy, right? Don’t worry, we’re scheduled to stop about halfway to pick up some bits and bobs on Rion. I won’t let you cramp up!”

Two days, two days bottled up in a space hardly bigger than a table with a total stranger and -

“Oh, that reminds me,” the pilot went on. She reached down in front of her and chucked a small pouch over her shoulder at Jyn. “I’m told you’re a dab hand with those. We’re going to have a bit of a problem if you’re not, to be honest.”

Jyn opened the pouch. Inside was a code replicator, almost identical to the one she’d spent hours solving as a child.

Cassian leaned forward to examine it, then turned to the pilot sharply. “We’ll be passing Imperial checkpoints?”

The pilot waved her hand reassuringly. “You can handle it, right, Jyn?”

Jyn studied it closely, then looked up. Cassian was leaning in again, his expression urgent.

“Can you do it?” he asked, and this, conspiratorial and close, this was easy.

“I know how to use these things,” she told him with a smile, enjoying his reaction. “I used to do them all the time for the Partisans.” She turned back to the pilot. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Cosmic,” said the pilot happily. “They said you could. We’ll have to go through a couple of checkpoints in and out of Rion so that should do the trick nicely.”

Cassian gave Jyn another half-smile as he sat back, and the light outside the viewport burned for moment; the ship broke atmosphere with a shudder, making Jyn intensely conscious of Cassian’s knees bumping between hers. She pulled her legs up onto the bunk and twisted around to lie on her front.

"I'll get on with it then," she said, slapping the code replicator down onto the pillow.

The pilot lifted a hand in a thumbs-up, but quickly returned it to the controls as the shuttle pitched.

"Hey now, girl," she admonished the ship jovially, "don't be like that. I'm allowed to have other friends."

Cassian frowned again. "You're sure this is going to get us there?"

"Oh yes," sang the pilot. "Safe as houses. You might want to hold on right now, though - whoops!"

Before either Jyn or Cassian could react, there was a bright flash and a stretching, leaping sensation. If Jyn hadn't been lying down, she would have gone flying; as it was, the code replicator surged up and hit her chin with a clatter. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Cassian thrown sideways over his bag and his hand flew to his back. The ship jolted and rocked as though under fire for a long minute.

"And that's the jump I warned you about," laughed the pilot when stability returned, spinning her seat around to face them. "There. Hyperspace! Next stop Rion."

As Cassian straightened up with care, Jyn rubbed her chin balefully and regarded the engineer of their mishap. The pilot was easily some twenty years Jyn's senior, freckled, with a wide, flat nose and an even wider grin. Jyn, to her immense irritation, found she liked her.

"This is Jyn Erso," Cassian told her, and Jyn knew he couldn't have missed that the pilot seemed already to know her name. "I'm Cassian Andor." It was a question, she realised.

"Yep," replied the pilot, grinning even more widely. "Flea and I are honoured to have to two of you aboard. Little ship, big cargo, eh, Flea?" She patted the dashboard behind her proudly, apparently oblivious to the cue, and went on. "I gather you're a bit of a pilot yourself, Captain. I'm going to need you to do shifts with me, if that's alright. You know, just sit here and make sure we're on course. No real flying."

Jyn wasn't convinced that what they'd experienced so far counted as real flying, either, but Cassian simply nodded and opened the cupboard behind his legs to stow his bag. It occurred to Jyn that, while she had no bag herself, even Cassian's was not especially large. Did he own anything much at all? Or had someone from the Alliance simply taken the rest of his belongings with them in anticipation of his return? She caught his eye and looked quickly back down at the code replicator, loosening her bun to let her hair fall in a protective screen around her as she got to work.

For the first time since not long after they'd met, it struck her that she didn't actually know him at all.

 

\--

 

Sorting and reassembling the authorisation codes was familiar and engrossing. Jyn was able to ignore the low thrum of the hyperdrive and the suffocating lack of space as she worked, barely even aware of Cassian’s eyes on her, watching with removed interest.

The pilot was halfway around in her seat, one hand lazily on the controls as they shot through hyperspace, the other poking at a datapad as part of some sort of pattern game, when Jyn finally looked up.

“I’m done,” she said, flipping onto her side and holding the codes out. “I’ve got us four so we’ve got backups if we need them or any don’t clear.”

The pilot looked around and stared at her, finger frozen above the data pad, which made a sad noise suggesting she had missed a move as a result. “You’re done?”

“Yeah.”

The pilot took the replicator with an expression of wonder. “Four codes in less than an hour… you’re some kind of genius.” She turned to Cassian. “She’s some kind of genius. Did you know?”

Cassian shrugged. “Not that.”

“It’s just a puzzle,” Jyn muttered dismissively. “It only looks like genius if you don’t know how. Like flying or -” she gestured at Cassian vaguely and hunted for something to say. “Programming.”

His expression changed and he shrugged again, looking away. “Sure.”

Jyn was seized again by the realisation she didn’t know this man. Perhaps he actually was a genius, and insulted by her dismissal. Or perhaps he was better at something else, and insulted by her failure to see it. Or perhaps he just wasn’t interested in compliments, backhanded or otherwise. She rolled her eyes impatiently - with him or with herself, she wasn’t sure - and turned back onto her front.

“Sorry I made you lose your game,” she said to the pilot.

“Ah, I was losing anyway,” she replied, glancing over her shoulder at the blackness through the viewport. What on earth she could be checking for at this speed, Jyn had no idea. “Passes the time, though. But then I don’t normally have people to talk to. I spy.”

Immediately, Cassian’s attention was fully on her, alert and ready.

She cast about for a moment. “Something beginning with... Besh…”

Jyn looked at her, then at Cassian, and dropped her face onto her hands. “We’re not playing I Spy,” she announced.

“Long flight,” said the pilot.

“Exactly,” snapped Jyn. “And there’s nothing in here to look at except - cupboards and bunks.”

“Bunks, yep. Your turn.”

The silence from Cassian was almost deafening; Jyn glared at the pilot. “We are not playing I Spy,” she repeated.

“It’s a game,” came Cassian’s voice in quiet comprehension, and Jyn didn’t miss the twist of bitterness.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never played I Spy?” said the pilot incredulously.

Jyn looked up in time to see him shake his head coldly at the pilot. “I never needed to.” 

The pilot frowned in confusion.

“Vev,” Jyn interrupted. “Something beginning with Vev.”

She’d played it with Mama in her rain-greyed childhood days, and had never particularly enjoyed the guesswork and chance of the game, preferring her lessons, or planting things with Papa. But the pilot leapt on the chance eagerly, summoning ever more creative and improbable synonyms for the scant contents of their craft, until finally -

“Viewport.”

Jyn pointed lazily at Cassian, hoping her surprise didn’t show.

The pilot looked incensed. “You can’t look at that,” she argued. “You look through it.”

“Same thing, if you’re any good,” Cassian said softly, and lay down with almost indiscernible awkwardness. “Ok. I - I spy… something that starts with Cherek.”

Jyn felt time drag even more slowly while they played, but all the same she was fascinated by Cassian’s participation, unenthusiastic though it was. If nothing else, she reasoned, it seemed to keep their gregarious escort occupied, and it was sufficiently bland for Jyn to allow her mind to wander.

She wondered whether Cassian knew yet that this placement had not been her doing. For a reason she couldn’t articulate, she didn’t feel compelled to tell him. It was not her fault if he mistook her for someone kind, she thought.

After a few rounds, Cassian slid abruptly off the bunk and headed into the fresher.

"Is he alright?" asked the pilot. "He seems a bit quiet."

"He just is quiet," Jyn answered, not ready to get further into talking about him. "So, how far are we from Rion?"

The pilot swivelled around briefly and checked the console, then span back. "It'll be tomorrow. Hungry?"

Jyn sat up and stretched, then pulled her hair back into its bun. "I'm probably just bored."

"As good a reason as any," shrugged the pilot, reaching above Jyn's head. She flipped down a frame and unfolded it, and suddenly there was a table in the space between the bunks. She looked at Jyn proudly. "That's my own modification, there. The Flea wasn't built for long-haul but needs must."

Jyn made an impressed noise, mostly to gratify the pilot, who beamed and appeared to await further comment.

"It's very clever use of space," she went on obligingly. And then, to her surprise, her interest was genuine. "How long ago did you put that in?"

"Same time as the bunks," she said. "A couple of years ago, when I joined up with the Rebellion. Hopping about, planet to planet. Little cargo runs - Empire didn't really bother checking a little hopper this size back then, so it was handy at first for shipping folks around under the radar."

"You're a smuggler," Jyn said, realisation dawning. "A people smuggler."

"Well, yeah, the good kind," came the answer, and Jyn tried hard not to think about the bad kind. It was the past. "Shipped a couple of the Captain's colleagues here and there a couple of times. He won't know about that, of course. Security, double blinds, all that. Had some fun scrapes."

Something about the way she tipped her head in reminiscence told Jyn that they hadn't been fun at all, at times. The pilot blinked and shook her head, returning to the moment.

"See that cupboard over there?" A thin cupboard lined the wall on the other side of the craft from the door to the fresher. "There's a few food trays in there if you want to haul them out."

Hopping up dutifully, Jyn took three steps the length of the craft and dodged her way around the metal door as she opened it. An avalanche of flimsy plastic trays of food, each covered with a film seal, tumbled forth, thrown from their resting place no doubt by the violent jump to hyperspace. They clattered and slipped to the floor, sliding down the door as she tried in vain to close it on the catastrophe. Even at the start of the flight, Jyn would have found it irritating, but now, two hours in, stiff from inertia, crushed by the weight of unrelenting company and with no promise of relief for another whole day, she had to stifle a scream of frustration.

"Oh, that happens sometimes," came the pilot's voice from behind her, apparently trying to step over the table to help.

"I'll sort it," Jyn said through gritted teeth, waving her away.

"Oh - ok." The pilot sounded meek, cowed, and Jyn silenced a faint tug of regret.

There was nothing for it but to let the cupboard swing open and unleash the rest of the landslide. As she crouched down to collect the pile of meal trays, though, there came the click of the fresher door opening, and the cupboard door smacked into her head, accompanied by a noise of surprise from Cassian.

It was the last straw. She let out a furious curse and shoved back as hard as she could, taking grim satisfaction in the angry yelp that resulted, and as she struggled to her feet and dodged her way around the door she came face to face with Cassian extricating himself from behind his own door and rubbing his arm.

“What the hell was that?” he protested.

“You kriffing slammed that door right into my head.”

“Slammed?”

“Right into me.” She navigated the trays around her feet to stand square in front of him. She could feel the walls receding again. Arguing felt good, like fire.

“I didn’t know you were there,” he said, but it was dangerously close to an apology, and she looked frantically for a way to spark him. She found it.

“Great observation skills, Spy.”

He darkened. “Back off.” And the fire took.

“What are you going to do, force me back with another door?”

“I’m not the one forcing anyone to go anywhere,” he snarled.

“Like you had a choice.”

Cassian’s mouth twisted into a hard line as he tried to move around her. “Get out of my way,” he growled.

She didn’t move, jutting her chin up at him, her heart racing with the fire of the fight. “Say you’re sorry.”

“I bet it was agony.”

“At least I can admit when I’m in pain,” she shot back triumphantly. “How is your back, by the way?”

They were almost nose to nose now, Jyn ablaze, Cassian cold fury.

“Get. Out. Of my way.”

“Thought you didn’t like me walking away, Captain,” she sneered, and took a step away. She flung the cupboard door as if to close it; it bounced off the pile of meal trays and flew back open, hitting Cassian in the side and producing a satisfying grunt as she picked her way back along the ship.

There was a bang behind her of the fresher door slamming shut. Jyn hauled herself up the ladder to the upper bunk, feeling Cassian’s shoulder knock against her legs as he passed, and clambered over the edge into the welcoming shadows.

The ceiling of the craft was right above her, with barely enough room to turn over. She heard the heavy groan of the lower bunk opposite as Cassian sat back down, and then a long pause, filled only by the manic shuffle of her pulse through the pillow, until finally, there was a creak and snap below her as the pilot quietly folded the table away.

 

\--

 

At some point, Jyn must have finally fallen asleep, because when she peered over the edge of her bunk, she saw the pilot sleeping in the bunk below her and Cassian at the controls, and she had no memory of the switch taking place.

There was little to do with a ship in hyperspace save the occasional once-over of the readouts to make sure nothing untoward threatened their course. From what she could make out from the back of his head, Cassian was simply staring out of the viewport at nothing. Jyn supposed patience was a skill he had learned to master long ago, and she caught herself wondering how naturally it came to him. After all, she had seen the instinct beneath his composure before: impetuous, rash, slicked with rain and panic as he dragged her away from her father's body, away from the bombing.

How much did it take to lay that part of him bare? She hated wanting to know.

As she watched him, he looked down at his lap - he was holding something, she realised - and sighed.

It was a sigh like she'd never expected to hear from him, a sigh that made her ashamed to have heard it. Moments before, she had wished to see more of him, and she wished now to have it taken back. She was an intruder - a spy. And yet -

And yet curiosity infected her shame, and despite herself she tried to imagine what it was that he held, what it was he contemplated with such heaviness. She reproached herself for her preoccupation with him, but another part of her responded: I have to live with him now. I should know him a bit at least. It almost satisfied her.

His bag was by his legs, and with a shake of his head, he shoved whatever he'd been holding back into the depths of it before swinging it quietly back onto the bunk behind him. He seemed to give the controls a quick check, and then went back to staring out into space.

Jyn watched him a little longer, studying his stillness - a new kind. She had known him still: taut with readiness, poised to move, to react; or still and languid but watching, appraising, calculating, choosing his words; or still and breathless with audacious hope in the peak of their madness; or that worst, that nightmarish stillness in the medbay, pale and shallow, with a droid's voice behind her saying perhaps, perhaps...

This was a new stillness, low, leaden. It wounded her.

"Hey," she said softly.

He didn’t start, but there was a sort of electricity that changed him. He turned and looked up at her warily.

“I just woke up,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t know what she’d seen. “Sorry about before.”

He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded, barely perceptibly. She shuffled forward a bit and bunched the pillow up under her chin, peering down at him. “How far?”

“Another ten hours, about, maybe,” he shrugged.

Jyn huffed dispiritedly. “I’m going crazy.”

He looked away, staring down the length of the ship, at nothing in particular. Force, he looked tired, more tired than she’d ever seen him; hollow and brittle, like bad ceramics. He’s not my problem, she reminded herself. It didn’t work.

“Any idea what we’re picking up on Rion?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “She said supplies. Clothes and things, for the weather on Pentroca. She’s got credits from the Alliance for it all.”

“Good,” she said. “I’m sick of these shirts.”

He didn’t respond. She shuffled further forward, and dangled her arm over the end of the bunk near his face. “Hey. Hey, Cassian.” He dragged his gaze back up to her. “I’m going to get something yellow.”

Cassian stared.

“I’ve never worn yellow before,” she grinned.

At last, he smiled faintly, and it felt like victory. But then, he closed his eyes with another sigh, and nudged his cheek into her hand, and the triumph turned to ice as she froze, rigid, until he finally turned back to the controls without a word.


	3. Worn

How Jyn made it through the next few hours she would never know. When the pilot awoke, she switched with Cassian; Jyn noticed how, when he lay on his bunk, he simply stared at the bottom of the mattress above him, barely closing his eyes for a moment. The pilot, though, seemed to assume he was asleep, and mercifully avoided chatter.

The fresher was, like everything else on the tiny shuttle, cramped and uncomfortable, but functional. There was a mirror above the handwasher and she stared into it as she pulled her hair back into its knot. To herself, she looked exactly the same as she always had: sharp, confrontational, disillusioned. She wondered if Cassian saw any change when he looked at himself. Or at her. She splashed her face and headed out.

A gesture at the pilot, with a quiet response - “no, I ate loads while you were sleeping” - and Jyn dared to tackle the cupboard door. Everything was neatly stacked again; no avalanche to bury her this time. She pulled out one of the trays and peered at it in fascination, settling herself cross-legged on the lower bunk.

“Need the table?” whispered the pilot. Jyn shook her head, and glanced at Cassian, eyes shut but unmistakeably awake. She peeled back the film gingerly and began what became a series of forays into new culinary territory.

She recognised bunn in one portion of the tray - dull yet unsuspicious. A thin, black, sausage-like thing turned out to be dry and bitter, while a mulchy substance in a circular recess turned watery as soon as it was in her mouth, and was impossibly sweet. She worked her way around the tray, leaving the bunn till last as a safe, if boring, conclusion to the adventure. She managed to eat everything, with the exception of a collection of round, soft pellets that made her eyes water with barely a nibble.

It was tolerable, but she wasn’t in a rush to face it again, despite still being hungry. If there were enough credits, maybe they could pick something up on Rion.

“How far off are we now?”

“About four hours.”

And so Jyn lay, and sat, and stood, and walked three steps to and fro, and lay, and stood, and sat. Rion seemed like a shining banner ahead. She tried not to think about having to do this all again between Rion and Pentroca.

Finally, the pilot looked up from her datapad and turned around. “We’re going to be coming out of hyperspace pretty soon,” she said quietly. “You’d better wake him up.”

“I’m awake,” answered Cassian, sitting up carefully.

The pilot started. “You were still as a rock! How long have you been awake now?”

_ The whole time, _ thought Jyn, but Cassian only gave the pilot a wan smile and moved off to the fresher.

The pilot watched him go, her expression thoughtful. “He doesn’t seem the conservation type,” she said at length.

“Do I?” Jyn returned. It was meant to be rhetorical, but the pilot grinned at her.

“You need the outside.”

Jyn was taken aback. She hadn’t, at any point, actually considered her suitability for the job ahead. Green space, some sort of focus, a little stability - plenty had appealed to her, but she’d not really considered it a match beyond that.

“My mother was a geologist,” was all she said.  _ My father was a farmer, _ she wanted to say. But the pilot knew who she was. It didn’t matter that it was true.

The pilot gave a light laugh and swung herself idly from side to side in her seat. “My mother was a dignitary of sorts,” she responded thoughtfully. “Lots of parties when I was growing up. Fancy gowns and all sorts.”

Jyn tried to picture the woman in front of her wearing anything more elegant than khaki overalls and a thick red sweater. It didn’t work.

“Wasn’t for me,” the pilot went on, as if she knew what Jyn was thinking. “There was too much else going on in the galaxy. So we don’t all follow in our parents’ footsteps,” she concluded brightly. Suddenly, her expression paled and she put a hand to her mouth. “I mean -”

Cassian emerged and immediately apprehended the uncomfortable silence, hesitating a fraction before making his way warily back to his bunk.

“We weren’t talking about you,” the pilot assured him awkwardly.

“Parents,” supplied Jyn with a shrug. Cassian shot a her sharp, alert glance; she shook her head imperceptibly.  _ It’s ok _ . _ I’m ok. _

“I’m glad you’re out of there, anyway,” chirped the pilot. “That fresher is not a good place to be when Flea comes out of hyperspace.”

Cassian’s eyes widened. “No, it wouldn’t be.”

“That was an image I didn’t need,” Jyn grimaced with the shadow of a laugh.

The pilot gazed into the air, feigning misty-eyed reminiscence. “Poor Lorbei… he learned, so that we may know…” She snapped back to the moment with a mischievous grin. “Better hold on.”

As the pilot swivelled back to the controls, Jyn gave Cassian a quizzical look, leaning forward and gesturing at his back. Immediately, he shuttered, all hard lines and cold air as he pushed himself back and braced against the wall behind him, looking away from her.

_ Fine then. _ Jyn followed suit, shuffling away to the opposite wall and putting her hands down flat.  _ Idiot _ .

“Another couple of minutes,” called the pilot. Jyn glared at her lap.

It began. The heaving, lurching rattle was almost enough to knock her over, even ready for it as she was. She spared a quick look at Cassian, his eyes tight shut and knuckles white on the bed, and a vicious sense of vindication stabbed through her. There was a feeling almost of being pushed through a rubber loop, a peculiar constriction, and a final jolt. The hyperdrive complained shrilly as it powered down, and she realised how much its whine had dominated her unconscious - recognised its aggravating persistence only when gone.

The stability of lightspeed deserted them, and the Sneezy Flea returned to hobbling awkwardly through space.

“All ok back there?” called the pilot cheerfully over her shoulder.

“We’re fine,” Cassian answered with harsh finality.

“Excellent.” She patted the dashboard. “Checkpoint coming up, Jyn. Feeling confident?”

“Let’s see,” muttered Jyn. It was never a sure thing. She was good, she knew, but it was never a sure thing. She had been cocky about it when younger. Not now.

The comm crackled. “Checkpoint Rion equatorial. Hopper class, transmit your clearance.”

Jyn pressed herself back against the wall again and took a breath.  _ It’s now _ , she reminded herself.  _ It’s not then. _ But Cassian, tense opposite her, and the space crowding around her, and the crackle of the comm, were too familiar.

The shuttle seemed to darken; she was glad of the wall behind her and the thin mattress below her. Again, Cassian’s eyes flicked to her, alert and questioning, and in the breathless silence she ignored him. He hadn’t accepted concern from her, after all. She didn’t need it from him.

“Clearance accepted,” hissed the comm. “Proceed.”

The pilot jigged in her seat and flipped the comlink switch off. “Nice work, Jyn!”

Jyn hummed a response and twisted her fingers in her lap.

 

\--

 

A little time later, they had bounced to a landing and stepped down the ramp into dazzling daylight on Rion.

The noise hit Jyn like the heat: carts rocking unsteadily over the uneven orange ground, speeders humming heavily past, voices in all languages calling out wares and prices - a market was situated right beside the landing port to catch voyagers as they arrived and left. She squinted in the sudden brightness, Cassian beside her raising his hand to shade his eyes.

“Welcome to Teysha City, Gateway to Rion!” screeched a Toydarian, buzzing up into their faces with a tray full of glowing pebbles. He leered at Cassian. “Something pretty for your lady? They’re protective...”

Cassian waved him away impatiently as the pilot appeared behind them. She landed a hand on each of them and shoved her head between, resting her chin on Cassian’s shoulder with a grin as she surveyed the tumult of the market.

“It’s crackers, right?” she laughed, giving Jyn’s hair a quick and aggravating ruffle. “I kind of love this place when I can get here. You two stick together, now, and back here in three hours. Any trouble, comm me. Have fun!” And she was off, striding away to the left and down a side-street.

Jyn hesitated, and looked at Cassian. “Food first?” He answered with a perfunctory nod and she started off across the plaza, Cassian close behind her.

Everywhere, there was colour and sound, while the smells of hot foods from stalls to either side mingled not unpleasantly with those of exhaust and engine oil. Despite - or perhaps because of - the checkpoint security, there was no visible Imperial presence; only crowds of beings of all heights and shapes and species moving around, buying, or selling, or in some cases both. A Ryn holding in his tail a basket of what looked like absolute junk wandered past, inspecting and collecting from stalls and the ground alike, apparently discerning value or worthlessness on indecipherable criteria. Jyn could hear some sort of curious pipe music, and spotted a Gungan sitting in a doorway playing the melodies on a beautifully intricate set of aquamarine tubes.

There were tricksters and mobsters, travellers and traders, furtive thieves, shrill-voiced tourists, beggars, priests, vagabonds. Pushing through the throngs, her senses spinning at each new stimulus, and Cassian close at her side, she was reminded, despite the heat, of NiJedha: how long ago it seemed. But here, there was no hum of tension beneath the bustle, no dark sliding movements in the shadows.

It was more than that.

_ I can go anywhere. _

The realisation almost knocked her breathless. There was no need to find anyone, lose anyone, survive, seek work, dodge detection. She had three hours to explore. Three hours to be - to be  _ aimless _ . She stopped in her tracks, pinned between wanting to run everywhere all at once, and not knowing where to start.

“What's wrong?” Cassian’s voice in her ear was a murmur; he looked around warily.

“Nothing,” she replied, and looked at him. “It’s a lot.”

He blinked at her, then relaxed with a soft laugh, and she suddenly felt it very necessary to move onward.

A little way ahead lay a stall emitting a spicy, swirling scent that seemed to beckon her. “How about over there?” she suggested, returning his smile briefly and heading off.

As she approached, she could see the food that was producing the enticing aroma. It was some kind of thick red stew, steaming in a huge vat, with a great pyramid of rolls beside it. A human man stood beside the vat and grinned toothlessly at her.

“Two,” she said, and the man grinned even more broadly, revealing even more lack of tooth, as he ladled out two foamy containers of whatever it was, shoved a wooden spatula into each, and plumped a roll on top. She paid and handed one to Cassian, then watched him expectantly.

Cassian had the roll, dripping with stew, halfway to his mouth when he paused and looked up at her.

“What?” he asked.

“Just checking,” she said. “Tell me if it’s awful.”

The man by the vat made a haughty noise and Cassian’s eyes crinkled. “You first,” he challenged her.

Jyn jutted her chin at him, but relented. She didn't take her eyes off him as she dipped her roll and brought it belligerently to her mouth, taking a huge, defiant bite.

Cassian watched with quiet amusement as she wrestled indelicately with her mouthful to pass judgement.

“‘Srlygud,” she managed at last, and promptly moved off, wiping her chin.

It  _ was _ really good, she was delighted to find. Spicy, with a sweetness she couldn't quite place, it oozed through the bread and seemed to warm her in a way that was pleasant despite the heat.

Cassian was at her side again, similarly involved in his meal, when he gestured at a bench that was in the process of being vacated by a white-furred being and its child. Jyn nodded and followed him over. They sat, shoulder to shoulder on the narrow bench, and looked out across the market in silence as they ate, watching the mass of people moving in all directions. The electric fence that Jyn had sensed between them before seemed now nothing more than the rough fabric of their shirts, a different hum of energy, and she shoved the last of the bread roll into her mouth at all once to smother the smile that threatened to betray her.

Again, she marvelled at the shifts that swept them time and again between impossible, impassable distance and this strange simplicity.

Of course, she knew that this, too, would pass. He thought her selfish, cowardly, ungrateful; she wasn't sure that it wasn't true. Either way, whatever regard for her that had once lit him must have long since fled, no matter how civilly he sat with her now. But she set aside the thought and chose to enjoy the moment as it was: good food, liberty, a plan, and a companion she trusted.

Cassian had finished his food already.

“Sorry,” she said, swallowing. “I've always been a slow eater.”

“When you don't know when the next meal will be,” he said, not needing to finish the thought.

She nodded, pointlessly, since he was still watching the people milling around, so she added a noise of agreement and busied herself with chasing the last of the stew around with the spatula.

“So the pilot,” said Cassian suddenly, with a sideways smile at her.

“Yeah, the pilot!” she said. “I feel like we can't ask her now. It's been too long!”

He leaned into her conspiratorially. “I’ve been calling her Molly in my head.”

It was so playful, so unexpected, that Jyn almost choked on the last of her stew. “Molly?!”

“You don't think she looks like a Molly? It's going to be hard for me to adjust now if you want to change it.”

Jyn finished her mouthful. “No, no,” she spluttered. “Molly is perfect. I just -” she shook her head wonderingly and watched the Toydarian pester a couple arriving into the square with his basket of pebbles. “Molly.”

“Yeah, so Molly said it’s warm on Pentroca,” and he was smiling, actually smiling at her, she realised, like he hadn't since - “Not as hot as here but we’ll need lightweight clothes, things we can move in.”

“Boots that fit,” Jyn added.

“Probably helpful,” he agreed. “Maybe light waterproofs.”

She took his container and stacked it with hers, trotting back to the stand to hand their empties back to the man. Cassian was standing, leaning on the back of the bench, when she got back. “Let's find clothes, then,” she said, and he smiled again, straightening up.

They moved out of the plaza and down a street strung across with drying clothes in all colours between the saffron walls that rose on either side. Without any real sense of where they were heading, they took turn after turn, down alleys and side streets, trying not to stray too far from the populated areas, in the assumption that most shops would be nearby. Neither was leading, neither following - they seemed to move together in an exploratory consensus, side by side and leisurely, until just as Jyn was wondering how they would find their way back, they encountered a street lined with shop-fronts that billowed with fabrics, piled high with bolts of cloth, glittering with countless spools of colourful threads that caught the light like jewels.

“Guess we found the tailors’ quarter,” she said with a grin that Cassian returned, and she tried to ignore the way the street seemed brighter still for a moment.

A woman appeared in front of them, waving her hands in a way that made the bangles up to her elbows rattle, and as they began to explain what they had come for, she seized them both by the hand and pulled them up the street, chattering at such a speed and with an accent so unfamiliar to Jyn that she had no idea about what she was saying beyond her obvious enthusiasm for her customers.

About halfway up the street they came to a pair of human outfitters directly opposite one another, and the woman waved Cassian officiously into the one on their left while pulling Jyn into the other.

The inside of the store was cool and well-lit, with all kinds of apparel folded on rows of trestle tables and hanging around the walls. At the rear was a curtained cubicle next to a long mirror. Jyn reeled. All the clothes she had ever owned were what she had been given, or had stolen. Now the bangled woman scurried around her busily, piling her arms high with garments, holding up this or that to Jyn’s face and responding with either a satisfied nod as she added it to the pile, or a grim shake of the head as she flung it into the waiting arms of her assistant, a harassed-looking Twi’lek boy who struggled as much as Jyn did under the ever-growing weight of the clothes bestowed by the woman.

Finally, Jyn was ushered behind the curtain and found herself in a small room with mirrors on three sides.

She stood for a moment, staring at herself from behind the mountain of clothing she held, and watched her own dazed expression; the same that had worried Cassian earlier, she assumed, and seeing it for herself she could understand why.  _ It's a lot _ , she thought again, and then saw something like a smile appear, and she set the pile on the small table in the corner to sort through it.

Some things she set aside right away: a long, floaty dress patterned with wide bands of colour was neither practical nor to her taste - she suspected the two things were the same. Similarly, she cast off a jacket with no pockets at all except one on the breast which turned out, to Jyn’s bafflement, to be decorative.

She pulled out the most likely-looking candidates and set them on the little stool by the table. Among the lightweight shirts and trousers, she added, with a touch of curiosity, a pair of grey shorts. She spotted a scrap of yellow in the pile and investigated.

It was a top, in delicate pale yellow, smocked for shape around the bust and waist but with full, sheer sleeves. She stared at it. Impractical and unnecessary, it looked like it would tear too easily and emphasise her shape more than she usually liked.

It was completely beautiful.

Jyn had felt pretty exactly once in her life, but the memory now of her petal-green Inusagian robes was soaked red with horror. But she couldn't imagine anything but sunlight and innocence in the top she held; it was so far from everything she knew… She stroked it uncertainly and hung it from the top of the curtain behind her. Maybe…

She turned back to the stack of shirts and trousers on the stool, then glanced again at the mirrors that reflected her back at herself from three angles, and took a breath.

She toed her boots off and dragged off her trousers, tugged her shirt over her head and grabbed the replacements from the top of the pile as fast as she could, trying unsuccessfully to close her eyes to the mirrors that broadcast replications of her scarred and patched body from three angles, three imperfect, perfect copies.

Jyn pulled on the new clothes quickly and turned back to her reflection. The woman was good, she realised - barring those few poor choices on style, she'd assessed her size and shape with almost alarming precision. They fitted, unexcitingly but effectively, the colours soft and dusty; they were at any length a far cry from the dull, loose brown of Yavin. She continued to work through the pile, ignoring the mirrors as necessary, generally approving the selections. The shorts felt adventurous, but they pleased her all the same. She considered them for a moment, catching sight of the long line across the back of her thigh that they revealed, and decided that they would do nonetheless, for a particularly hot day.

A thought struck her and she tugged back the curtain, popping her head out. The woman bustled up attentively.

“Um, I need shoes,” she said hesitantly. “And, er -”

The woman beamed and scuttled away, returning with a selection of shoes and her assistant, who was blushing furiously and carrying an armload of underwear.

Jyn began to thank them, and froze.

There was someone walking past the window. He was barely recognisable as a Togruta, his head-tails severed and his montrals filed down flush with his head; the scarring indicated that the injuries were old, but he looked left and right intently in a way that betrayed the difficulty they posed him. Barely recognisable as a Togruta, yes, but recognisable as a person; his face was unchanged.

Jyn knew him.

The last time she had seen Jari, Saw had been throwing him out of a moving speeder into the hands of the Empire, left for dead, or as good as. He'd done it for her - she doubted Jari would be pleased to see her.

He looked like he was searching for something. The icy dread that filled her as he vanished past the window was irrational, she knew - he couldn't know she was here, he probably wouldn't recognise her after all this time, he couldn't be looking for her…

She snatched the shoes and dived back behind the curtain. They fit fine, so she threw her own clothes back on, grabbed the items she’d tried already, and flung back the curtain. She barely registered the yellow top falling to the ground as she flew to the counter. They had to go - now. She knew it was nothing, less than nothing, probably, but an undefined terror gripped her nonetheless. She had to find Cassian and get off Rion right away.

Jyn paid as hastily as she could, shifting from foot to foot with her heart in her mouth as the woman wrapped up her bundle in brightly-striped cloth and tied it with a length of purple ribbon. It seemed to take an age. Finally, Jyn was clutching her bundle in her arms and hurried to the doorway; a quick glance each way down the street revealed no sign of Jari, and she was just preparing to dash across to the store opposite when Cassian appeared from a little way down the street, a full-looking satchel across his body.

“Got everything?” His smile fell away at her expression; Jyn grabbed his arm and pulled him round the side of a stall that sold small patches in wildly-embroidered patterns.

“We’ve got to go,” she muttered, and suddenly her hand burnt and she released his arm. “Someone here knows me. We’ve got to go before he sees me.”

Anyone else might have asked for a fuller story, but Cassian looked her over and didn't need to question her further. He glanced out down the street.

“What does he look like?”

“Togruta,” she answered, hating the tremble in her voice. “No montrals or lekku.”

“He's gone,” Cassian told her after a moment. “Let’s get back to the ship. Comm Molly.”

Jyn’s pulse was racing; she almost dropped her purchases as she fumbled for the comlink.

“We need to go,” she muttered into it. “How soon can you make it back to the ship?”

There was a silence that seemed to Jyn to go on forever. She began to imagine that Jari had found the pilot, left her dying in an alley, was hunting now for Jyn, murder and vengeance in mind…

“Trouble?” The pilot’s voice came back low and urgent, barely familiar without its cheery note.

“Maybe,” Jyn said, watching Cassian survey the street cautiously. “I'd rather not wait around and find out.”

“I’ll see you back at the ship.”

“Thanks.” Jyn flipped off the comlink and drew a shaky breath.

Cassian turned back to her and came in close. “Let's go.”

It felt like hours passed as they hastened back along the streets down which they had so recently wandered with easy freedom. Her nerve endings were on fire, her mind an incoherent jumble of half-imagined worst-case scenarios that tumbled over each other ever more rapidly. The yellow walls seemed sour and pressing, the garish laundry flapping and snapping in unfelt wind like ghost sentinels. Jyn fancied that everyone they passed looked at her too closely, recording her face to memory. She was aware of Cassian moving against her, furtive and watchful, his satchel swinging at her back, as they hurried round corners that seemed too dark and too sharp.

As they neared the plaza, he touched her arm, halting her. “Wait here,” he murmured.

Jyn nodded, trying to breathe steadily.

He moved out into the plaza, the picture of casual wandering, but for the attentive turn of his head right and left as he went. Finally, he motioned to her: all clear.

Molly was already standing by the Flea on the landing port at the far side of the plaza, Jyn realised as she weaved through the throngs in Cassian’s wake. She was torn between checking over her shoulder and trying to avoid attracting attention, aware she was already walking too quickly, looking around herself too much. A passer-by with a basket full of wares jostled her as she passed and her heart skipped a beat; she almost dropped her bundle and ran headlong for the ship but forced herself to keep pace. She scanned the high walls surrounding the plaza and saw nobody there - if Jari was watching the crowd from above, he was concealed - reason told her that there was almost no way he could pick her out from up there unless she broke into a run. Reason told her, in fact, that he probably had no idea whom he had passed so nearly, no idea that she was still alive, spared her little thought if any.

Reason failed. She ran.

Molly already had the gangway down as Jyn barged the last few beings out of her way. She caught Cassian up just as they reached it; he held out his hand and she grabbed it, her new clothes under her arm, and together they tore up the gangway and into the safety of the ship.


	4. Restless

Molly was already in the pilot’s seat as the gangway reared up shut behind them. Cassian pulled Jyn in close and put a steadying arm around her.

“What happened?” he asked. “You ran.”

“We’re off,” Molly shouted in warning over her shoulder, and before Jyn could answer, the Flea jerked and pitched as its engines began firing, and she was thrown closer against Cassian, who staggered back toward one of the bunks.

Jyn wrenched her hand free and threw herself away from him onto the mattress, pressing against the wall. With another jolt, Cassian tumbled backward and gave a sharp gasp as he landed awkwardly opposite her.

“Alright back there?” called Molly.

Jyn glanced at Cassian’s grimace and called back, “We’re set.”

Within minutes, they were breaking atmosphere, and the call came through the comm for a departure checkpoint code. Jyn’s mind was still racing too much to process a repeat of the tense silence as they transmitted her forged code, her thoughts too full of Jari to sense any relief as they were cleared to pass.

Finally, with more rattling and whining, they made it into hyperspace, and the Flea steadied.

“What happened?” Cassian asked her again as stability returned. “Did he see you?”

Jyn shook her head and pushed her hair back, drawing her knees up to her chin. “I panicked,” she muttered shakily. “I just got - it was too much.”

The pilot’s seat span around. “So what was the trouble, if I can ask?” Her tone was recognisable again now they they were clear.

“Just an old friend,” Cassian answered grimly. Jyn wondered that he asked for no further explanation. But he understood, she realised; she probably would ask no more of him, were things the other way round. But he looked at her with an unreadable expression and Jyn suddenly felt ridiculous and foolish. She’d  _ panicked _ , like a little child; what must he think of her?

“Anything I need to worry about?” Molly asked.

“I don't think so,” answered Jyn quietly.

“It was just safer to go,” added Cassian, and Jyn cringed. She’d overreacted. He must know. The sight of Jari had brought her down too hard and too fast from her unaccustomed frivolity. She'd responded disproportionately. She thought, with disgusted regret, of stew, and of a shoulder leaning against hers, and of fanciful yellow sleeves, discarded in the dust.

 

\--

 

Jyn passed almost two hours in tumult and humiliation, hugging her legs and ignoring tentative words of reassurance from the others. Finally, though, she unfolded herself and tried to engage, but she found herself brittle and irascible, until even Molly stopped trying to make conversation.

The flight to Pentroca was as tedious as the first leg had been, with the added injury that in their rush to leave Teysha City, they had not acquired any extra food, so the tray-meals from the cupboard were now more than simply uninspiring - they were a stinging reminder of her failure. Jyn chided herself relentlessly, and knew that if Cassian had not been convinced of her cowardice before, he would surely be certain now.

When she tried to sleep, she jerked awake constantly from dreams of Jari leaning over her with a vibroblade and a triumphant sneer, or hearing his voice behind her and the hard weight of a blaster barrel between her shoulders, or of Saw shaking his head at her in disappointment as she ran, frantically, down countless identical streets, her pursuer always gaining, always invisible. Once, she dreamed she almost reached safety, but the ground before her rose up in a heaving wall of dirt and rubble and bedrock, blocking her way, turning impossibly to a blinding, boiling ocean wave that bore down on her.

So the hours dragged, muted and dim, sleep evading her, until what felt like an eternity later Molly motioned for the end of Cassian’s shift at the controls and, taking his place, announced they would be leaving hyperspace near the Pentroca orbit any minute.

A day ago, Jyn would have felt she was unready to bid farewell to their new friend, but now she wanted nothing more than to get far away from any company at all. The Flea seemed smaller with every sullen, silent moment that passed, and there was no escape from Cassian’s looking at her; he just kept  _ looking _ at her - she could see it from the corner of her eye and knowing what he must be thinking was like a sharp stone in her boot. As she had thought on Yavin, she remembered: better scorn than concern, at least.

On cue, the Flea began its jerking, bucking resistance while Jyn gritted her teeth impatiently. Finally, it evened out, and Jyn and Cassian stood, watching the viewport fill again with shape and colour.

“Pentroca,” announced Molly with a grand gesture, her brightness apparently returning with the end in now in sight. “Not bad.”

Pentroca resolved before them: small and deep indigo blue, with white mountain ranges spiralling out from the poles in galactic arms. Straight-edged continents paved the oceans in jasper and leaf green, and one vast, rosy storm swirled across half of the planet, bridging the thin meridian of night and day.

Cassian gazed at it, the fresh light reflecting like a jewel from Pentroca’s surface onto his face, tinged with yellow from Ginqou glittering in the far distance. “Your new home, Jyn,” he murmured.

Jyn bristled at the implication. She wouldn’t be made to feel ashamed for wanting some permanency in her life. “It’s yours too, you know.”

He turned to her with a frown. “Temporarily.”

There it was. She set her jaw, and after a moment he shook his head and looked away. There it was.

“Far from landing?”

“Not really,” answered Molly, and though she sounded cheerful again, Jyn thought she was paying more attention to the controls than was entirely necessary, feigning oblivion to the shots being traded across her back. She seemed to rally. “So how much do you kids know about Pentroca?”

Cassian shrugged, and Molly made a face. “Me neither. Doesn’t look my kind of place, though. Look at that, where’s the towns?” She gestured at the expanding orb before them. “Nothing.”

“I think that’s the point,” muttered Jyn.

“Well, yeah,” Molly drawled, patting the dashboard, “but it’s no good for me and the Sneezy Flea. We’ll just be dropping you off and bouncing away again. Hey, with those spare codes maybe I can drop in on Rion again!”

Jyn looked at the now-familiar mess of sandy frizz that was the back of Molly’s head, and chewed the inside of her cheek. Suddenly the moody silence of the last few hours felt a waste. She turned away and sat down on the lower bunk.

Before long, the Flea was beginning its uneven descent, pitching and yawing treacherously as the surface of the planet stretched across the viewport and blossomed into detail, rendering first hills, canyons, shorelines, then trees, tracks, pathways; they passed over a town of sorts, lurching past the low buildings and specks of beings. The line of night had drawn past the vast, rosy storm in the east, and Ginqou’s yellowing evening light now sat low on the rises of relief, shading even the blades of grass with ever more precision.

“Hold on,” chirped Molly, and with a heaving, whining thump, they were on the ground.

 

\--

 

The smooth stone of the wall beneath the window pressed comfortingly against her back as Jyn rested her head on her knees, hugging her shins and staring out into the night. The dewy grass beneath her was seeping through her thin pyjama trousers, cold and real, and the breeze that lifted her hair from her face brought with its leafy whisper fresh, unfamiliar scents: sweet night-blossoms, the tang of herbs, the heavy, damp smell of soft bark.

The sky domed in glittering violet-navy above her, unbroken except by the branches of the tree and, far off on the horizon, the thin black cut-outs of what, in the day, had been mountains. She stared up. Somewhere up there, if she had a strong enough scope, she could see Lah’mu as it was before, as it was long before she was born, long before she had gone there, perhaps before the stones of the shore had worn to sand. Yavin was probably leaping with whatever life had built the great, ancient edifice the Alliance had later infested. And Alderaan, too - Alderaan was still lit by its star, still reflecting turquoise grace in all directions, wastefully spilling its moments into the black.

Jyn shivered, and stretched her nightshirt over her knees; the susurration in the branches above spoke of the chill that swept past. It was still better than inside. The low-roofed house was simple and inviting, and the room she’d been given no less so; she’d unwrapped her new clothes and placed them carefully into the drawers, smoothing them out hesitantly, listening to how the hollow scrape of opening turned to a full, satisfied rumble on closing. The sheets on the bed were homely and soft, with a thick, colourful blanket folded at the foot, and another on the frail-looking chair in the corner.

She guessed that Cassian’s room was much the same. She hadn’t really seen much of the house; “I suppose you must be shattered; I’ll show you your rooms,” was all Terena had said when they’d reached it, warmly though she’d welcomed them at Molly’s handover.

“You two take care, now,” Molly had said, her eyes bright and smile weak, and Cassian’s face when she had pulled him in for a tight hug had flashed with surprise and pain and something else. Without really knowing why, Jyn had stepped back to avoid the same, and then, with a final look to Terena which Jyn had not understood, Molly had vanished into the Flea and wobbled away through the air and into the dimming sky.

Terena - smiling, serious - had gestured them toward the house, promising better introductions in the morning, and Jyn had found herself alone again in a room with a bed that was long enough and comfortable. She’d lain there for what felt like hours, her pulse racing and her palms prickling. Finally, she had climbed out of the window and sat beneath it, where she was now, feeling her heartbeat slow and waiting for Ginqou to rise between the mountains and pale out the stars in soft dawn grey.

She fell asleep slowly and lightly, woken at times by the movement of the branches, or by the call of a bird, or by the dampness beneath her, or by nothing she could discern at all; so the sky cycled through its blues in episodes of waking, snapshots of lapis and slate until finally daylight lanced between the peaks. Jyn unfolded herself with care, letting her cramped knees loosen and shaking out the tingling in her soles, then climbed as silently as she could back through the window.

The room -  _ her  _ room, she supposed she should consider it - seemed bare and strange in the half-leaked light. The whole place had what she assumed should be thought of as rustic charm - old-fashioned wooden doors on proper hinges like the cupboards on the Flea, and the coloured blankets on the bed and the chair looked too soft for synthetics. She coaxed open one of the drawers - wooden, too - as quietly as she could and hesitated, stared in confusion at the display of garments. What was she meant to do? Were there customs she was meant to follow? Weather she should take into account? She swallowed, her hand frozen above the clothes. She’d forgotten that people did this.  _ Why  _ people did this. Was variety a necessity she’d forgotten to comprehend, or a luxury she’d forgotten how to enjoy? She remembered trying the clothes on in the store - a vaguely entertaining game, but not one whose overwhelming consequences she had counted on dealing with every morning from now on. And then, by extension, she remembered Jari passing the storefront. She grabbed the first garments to hand, heedlessly rumpling the neatly folded contents of the drawer, and shoved it shut as quickly and quietly as she should.

She slipped out and down the hallway to the refresher, past the kitchen on her right, the bare stone floor cool beneath her feet. A water shower: it seemed almost incongruously extravagant until she realised how simple the system must be, and then she stepped under the warm water and her thoughts finally washed away into nothing.

When she arrived in the kitchen, dressed and with the dark waving of still-wet hair down her neck, she was taken aback to find Cassian already sitting at the heavy wooden table, and apparently as surprised to see her this early as she was him.

“Morning,” she said, hovering at the door.

He closed his mouth and looked down at the table wordlessly, and Jyn, with a start, recognised the way he had looked at her, remembered his cheek pushed wearily into her hand, and felt a lurch. It was too late for all of that. She gritted her teeth, ruffled her hands in her hair to shake off the damp, and sat opposite him with deliberate nonchalance. Perhaps it was, but they still had to work together.

“I said morning,” she said, without rancour, finding a smile from somewhere as she put her chin her hands.

He dragged his gaze back up to meet hers and dredged up a wan smile of his own. Eyes red, face drawn, he looked like he’d slept even less than she had, if at all. “You’re up early.”

_ You too. _ “New place, I guess. Terena seems nice.”

Cassian nodded and rubbed a forefinger over the crease between his eyebrows.

“Ready for our first day in the field?” It was met with dark silence. With superhuman effort, she summoned some brightness. “Looks like a beautiful area. Should be interesting to get started.”  _ Come on, Cassian. Talk to me. _

“Jyn.”

She paused. “What?”

Cassian pushed his hand across his mouth and closed his eyes. “Yeah.”

Jyn watched him for a moment, wondering if he would say whatever he had been going to say, and whether she even wanted him to. “It’s going to be a nice day,” she said shortly.

He nodded again, opening his eyes wearily.

“Reckon she has such a thing as caf anywhere around here?” Jyn persisted.

“I don't drink it.”

“You do now,” she retorted. “Look at you.”

Cassian regarded her for a moment, then pushed his chair back and wandered across the kitchen. He seemed glad of a reason to move away from her. The kitchen was still comparatively dim, facing away from the mountains and the sunrise; Cassian opened wooden cupboards at random, staring at pots, dishes, tubs of foodstuffs, curious jars that Jyn assumed must contain preserves… she might have expected him to be brisk, methodical, but his search was as indifferent as it was fruitless. Jyn almost winced to watch.

Inexplicably, he peered into the chiller.

“You won’t find caf in there,” Jyn reminded him.

“No…” he agreed vaguely, then stepped back holding a bottle of something that, even in the pale morning light of the kitchen, was very pink. “There’s this, though.”

“What's that?”

He sniffed it, and raised his eyebrows. “Thought so. It’s Eksa juice. Ever had it?”

She frowned and shook her head, and Cassian smiled faintly.

“You'll either love it or hate it,” he warned, and went back to the cupboard where he had seen some rough blue beakers.

“And where do you stand on it?” Jyn asked as he poured them each a cup.

“Here you go.”

She looked at the proffered beaker, at the opaque pink fluid shivering between the blue walls, and glanced up suspiciously; he raised his own beaker at her, his faint smile broadening a little. A challenge. Jyn rolled her eyes and grabbed it, sloshing a little over the side onto the stone floor, then braced herself and took a large gulp.

It hit her on the teeth and tongue like sunlight on a glacier. Fresh, clean, sweet, with a brightly exotic sharpness, the ice-cold celebration almost made her dizzy as it slid down. She’d never tasted anything like it. She stared.

“I hate it,” she announced at length.

“No, you don't.”

Jyn huffed an echoing laugh into her beaker as she took another taste. Cassian turned away, sipping his juice and watching the morning spread over the fields beyond the long shadow of the house. She studied him, silhouetted against the light of the window: it suddenly struck her that he’d lost weight. His thin shirt, new as it was, hung awkwardly from his narrow shoulders, and still that strange stance betrayed his discomfort. The pale light caught his profile, lit the edges of his uncombed hair a soft earthen brown, and Jyn suddenly burned with pity.

“I haven't said thanks,” she said.

He didn’t turn. “It's just juice.”

“No -” she hesitated. “I mean, for coming.” It sounded limp, pointless. He knew as well as she did that he had had little choice. “It'll be good,” she tried again. “A break.”

“I don't need a break,” he muttered.

“ _ Need _ , whatever.” Jyn stood and went around the table, close enough to touch his arm. She didn’t. “What about what you  _ want _ , Cassian?”

He laughed bitterly and turned to her, face half-lit and hard-lined. “That's your job, not mine.”

Jyn almost flinched at the barb. “What, so you don’t want to go back and fight either?”

“This isn't going to work,” he said abruptly, dumping his beaker back onto the table and moving off.

Jyn caught him as he went, stopping him with his back to her. “Is this how it’s going to be? Because in that case no, you’re right, it isn’t. I’m trying to -”

“To what?” he scoffed, pulling his arm free as wheeled around to face her. She gaped at him.

“We’re colleagues, Cassian,” she said at last, her voice hard. “Act like it.”

His eyes moved over her face, critical and cheerless, then he turned away again. “I’m taking a shower.” Again, he was gone, and Jyn stared at the dark doorway in mute, powerless misery.

_ I’m trying. _ And then,  _ This was a mistake. _

Jyn threw out the rest of the juice and rinsed out the cups, turning them over on the side to drain before she sat back at the table. She heard the sound of running water from the shower and sat again, turning her attention to the window. The shadow of the house reaching away was pulling in slowly, the fields resaturating as Ginqou made its ascent past the peaks in the east.

“Good morning,” came Terena’s warm voice. Jyn jumped and twisted round in her seat. “Sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you. Have you eaten?”

Without waiting for an answer she had headed over to the cupboards and started pulling out breakfast supplies. Terena Ludix was a little taller than Jyn, a little older than Cassian, Jyn guessed, and gave off an air of practicality that Jyn liked. Her clothes were clean, but not without creasing; her hair was braided in tidy rows along her head into a pair of short plaits at the back, and her movement, though brisk, was without tension

“Can I help?” Jyn asked, as the other woman poured some sort of powder into a pan.

“Oh - thanks. Can you get me the nerf milk from the chiller? It goes in with -” she gestured at the powder with one hand while she dug a knife from a drawer with another.

Jyn went around her to the chiller and found a bottle of milk behind the jug of Eksa juice. “So how long have you been doing this?” She returned to the powder and tentatively added a dash, stirring gently.

“Just slosh a load in,” instructed Terena, slicing bread. “Needs to be a thinnish paste - it thickens with the heat so - don’t go wild - yeah, like that. Um, a couple of years, now.”

“Being a conservationist?”

“I’m an ecologist, technically,” Terena said. She ran a finger thoughtfully along the jars of preserves. “Not the same thing. Yeah, just - stir it - good - I studied on Iurador, it’s eight years and then you qualify, so, yeah, then I spent a couple of years doing this and that and then came here. You?”

Jyn peered at the thickening white paste with curiosity. “Mm, no,” she replied absently, resuming stirring. “I know a bit about skycorn and rocks… that’s sort of it. You’re going to have to teach me. Does this look right?”

“Is it sticking?”

“It’s sort of -” Jyn raised the spoon in demonstration, and a globule of paste dangled from it, then splatted back into the pan fatly.

“Ah, no, that’s good, keep going. So, a new student for me!” she offered a warm smile, which Jyn endeavoured to return. “What about your friend?”

_ Friend. Almost, sometimes, maybe. _ “He’s - I don’t think so.” A thought struck Jyn. “Do you mind our being here?”

Terena was setting the bread onto the table; she looked up in surprise. “Mind?”

Jyn shrugged.

“Not if you’re easy company,” Terena shrugged in return, and her tone was light, but Jyn heard the warning. “Anyway, there’s too much to do alone. It was alright with the two of us but Neeni left a while back and I’m not exactly keeping up so I’m glad of the help.” She looked over Jyn’s arm into the pan. “Looks good. I’ll finish off, have a seat.”

“Cassian should be here soon,” Jyn told her, heading back to sit at the table. “He’s up, anyway.”

“I know.” Terena looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow, and Jyn felt a twist in her gut, and suddenly understood the warning from before.

The table was a spread like Jyn hadn’t seen in years: basic, rustic, and hearty. Thick slices of bread lay over each other, a block of pale yellow cheese beside them, a jar of green chutney glistening close by. Terena had even put the entire jug of shining pink Eksa juice out, with fresh cups, and whatever she’d been stirring in the pan was starting, improbably, to smell irresistible. Jyn couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten something so  _ real _ .

“Smells good. Can I help?” It was Cassian’s voice - but not.

“Morning!” Terena’s voice betrayed nothing and Jyn wondered how much she’d heard: every word, or just their bitter, sniping tone? “No, nearly done, have a seat.”

Jyn stared as he sat opposite her. He was transformed somehow. His damp hair was neatly combed, and his light smile told nothing of the exhaustion she’d seen in him before. He gave her an easy nod of greeting and gestured delightedly at the table.

“This looks amazing,” he said with enthusiasm.

He always looked younger when he smiled, Jyn thought, and immediately danger prickled her neck.  _ This was a mistake _ , she thought again with dread.

Terena joined them swiftly, plonking a bowl down in the middle, and Jyn shook herself out of her thoughts. The paste in the bowl had thickened into a dark orange pudding of some kind, steaming gently as it sank in the middle.

They tucked in. The pudding was mild and delicious, not quite sweet, but not savoury either. The green chutney, by contrast, packed a kick that was best complimented by the cool, mellow cheese. Terena was briefing them on their day’s activities - planting seedlings she’d had delivered the day before - and between trying to quell her panic and being overwhelmed by the first real food she’d had in years, Jyn found she was struggling to concentrate.

“It’s not actually the plants themselves that are at risk,” Terena was saying. “But they’re a necessary symbiont to some trees that are.”

“How so?” Cassian tipped his head, charming, interested, engaging. Jyn felt sick.

“Mm -” Terena held her finger up while she finished her mouthful, and he laughed gently.

“Sorry, just quizzing you mercilessly while you’re trying to eat.”

“No -” she swallowed again - “it’s fine, sorry. So basically the topsoil here is quite a lot richer in magnesium than in their native system, and the rain washes it down from the surface into the deeper earth, and the trees have deep roots and they’re struggling with much of it in the water. So these plants, the sidoxia, they thrive on magnesium, they have these quite shallow root networks that spread out quite far, and they’ll filter the magnesium out before it reaches the deeper roots of the trees. That’s the idea, at least.” She cocked her head thoughtfully.

“It’s fascinating,” Cassian said, and then: “I’m looking forward to being colleagues.” Above his smile, his eyes met Jyn’s with a dark flash.


	5. Bridge

By the time they’d cleared away breakfast and stepped outside, the sun was above the mountains and the day was already heating up.

“You’ll need -” Terena had said, waving large flasks of water at them, which they’d put in their satchels, and which now bumped heavily against their sides as they walked in the warmth of the morning, Terena pulling a trailer loaded with carefully-stacked trays of whisper-green seedlings.

The back of the house, to the south, faced onto a garden, it turned out. It was a stretching allotment burgeoning with leafy promise: round, leafy edibles in knotted rows of green and purple, climbing fruits and pods winding up cane-towers amid delicate blossoms, heavy-scented herbs crowding the air, and further off, a dusting of trees that Jyn supposed must be some sort of orchard. In the warm morning sunlight, everything seemed hyper-real, the shadows sharp and fresh.

Squatting amid the rows of climbers, covered by a rainsheet, was a lumpen shape.

“What’s that?” Jyn pointed.

Terena sighed. “That’s Endy. P-4ND, my droid. Another reason I’m falling behind. His software’s gone all squashy so I had to shut him down for a bit till I can spare a couple of days, take him across to someone in Ruba for a service.”

“Squashy?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong. He just kept digging up my corselaniums all of a sudden.”

Jyn laughed at the mental image, and looked expectantly to Cassian. If anyone could fix a droid’s programming, it was -

He was listening with polite concern, nothing more, and as they walked on past the sad covered hump amid the twisted canes, he asked their host instead about Ruba - what it was like as a town, how often she needed to go, whether they would accompany her sometime…

Jyn let herself fall back, allowed the heavy crunching of the trailer over the stony track drown out their conversation. She gripped her satchel’s strap hard and blinked hard.

“You alright back there?” Terena called over her shoulder at length.

“I’m fine,” Jyn lied with a wave, and as they moved on she swallowed to shift the constriction in her throat.

Target practice. After the hazy, half-remembered days of MacVee’s domestic ministrations, that’s all droids had ever been to her. She remembered Saw’s gibbet, how they had turned slowly, swinging with a harsh creak in the breeze, the distant clanking at night when the wind picked up and carried the sound of their limp collisions down the hill to her dusty room. Just circuits and chrome. Just a target. That a droid could be a friend, she’d barely had time to understand. But now, that someone could even grieve… she watched Cassian’s gentle, animated interest, his light gestures and easy conversation: it was as strange and false as a tin drum.

The trailer’s scraping turned to a muted rumble as they turned left off the track into long grass, toward a line of trees in the distance. A good way along the track, if they’d followed it, Jyn could see the shapes of huts and pens, sheltered enclosures, a paddock of some kind. In the other direction, between them and the mountains, the star was high enough over the peaks to light a bright sheet on the plain - a lake, Jyn realised, lined on the far side with trees whose branches hung in a gauze veil and stirred the shining water with dreamy indifference.

The trees ahead were thicker, wilder in shape, reaching up, not down. The shade would be welcome soon; already, Jyn was feeling the heat sketch at her neck. She touched a hand to the weight of the flask in her bag.

Grief was a language nobody ever really mastered. She remembered it overwhelming her as a child, remembered how it shouted in her mind from all directions like a marketplace, unfamiliar cadences that bewildered and lost her. She had, in time, grown conversant, had learned dialects, even: her grief for her mother had been long and low and directionless; for her father, raw and bomb-bright. She had never thought to feign otherwise. But here, Cassian’s amiable pretence challenged her fluency, struck her as a foreigner anew: eloquently incomprehensible, but at least, at last, she recognised the language.

The sound of the trailer up ahead changed once more: a rhythmic stutter as it rattled over a narrow bridge that forced Cassian, too, to drop behind. It was a soft, glimmering stream strung with weed and light, and he hung back, leaning against the rail and looking down into it.

“Everything alright?” he asked, looking up as she neared, and she had forgotten what it felt like not to believe him.

“Is it?” she replied softly.

His smile tightened, then slid away. He glanced over his shoulder to where Terena now waited a little way off, tapping her foot next to the trailer.

“It has to be,” he said, and Jyn, without really knowing why, brushed her hand across his arm and crossed the bridge ahead of him.

Resolving into view as Jyn approached Terena and the trailer was a forest before the forest: an expanse of tubes housing the flimsy trunks of saplings.

“Are those our trees?” Jyn asked, ignoring the question in the other woman’s expression and gesturing at the trailer.

“Yep, them’s the babies,” Terena said, stepping aside to let Jyn take over. “Yeah, I mean you’ll see when we -” she waved vaguely at the area and turned as Cassian caught up. “Alright?”

“Sorry,” he shook his head self-deprecatingly. “I haven’t seen a stream like that for years, you know?”

Terena broke into a broad grin. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Feeds into the lake down that way. I’ve been meaning to test the water composition there.”

“What would you be hoping to find?”

“Well, it depends whether…”

Jyn hauled at the trailer and moved off toward the spindly forest of young trees, half-listening to the discussion, torn between interest and discomfort. They were almost at their destination when she tuned back in again.

“Neeni and I planted them a while back and they should have grown a lot faster than this. Took me a while to work out the problem.”

“The magnesium thing?” Jyn finally piped up.

“Oh -” Terena seemed surprised to hear her speak. “- yeah.”

“How did you work it out?” Cassian asked.

She rubbed the back of her neck and gestured to Jyn to stop. “Uh, here is as a good a place as any, Jyn, thanks. Basically it was - hold on.” She ran over to one of the saplings and pulled off a leaf. “See this?” she said as she brought it back and handed it to Cassian. “It’s too dark, should be a kind of pale… well, paler.”

He turned it over in his hands, then passed it to Jyn, who studied it. It  _ was  _ dark, edged with coppery-pink, broad and flat.

“That’s the magnesium,” she told them, starting to unload the trays from the trailer. “Too much of it stunts the growth, too, poor things. So I’m hoping these will sort them out a bit.”

Before long, they had the trailer empty, trays of seedlings laid out at intervals between the tubes. Terena handed them each a trowel and demonstrated how to plant them. There was a technique to it, she explained: a certain depth, a certain spacing. Too far apart and they wouldn’t do the job properly; too close together and they’d choke each other out. After watching them both plant a couple each, adjusting and advising as necessary, she seemed satisfied, and started work herself.

The three of them worked a little way off from each other, close enough to call out questions but too far for conversation, and it suited Jyn. She dimmed her thoughts to a background hum and focused instead on the rough feeling of the trowel handle, how it resisted against her hand when she pushed it into the dirt with a satisfying scrape. The seedlings, each a twin fountain of flat green, stitched a slow line beside her as she went; the earth smelled rich and musty, crumbling softly beneath her fingers in the rising heat. It was a sensation she had forgotten long ago, one that belonged under rain, deep in her own private maze of towering skycorn. The memory came warm and without sting, and Jyn smiled to herself as she worked on. She could live like this, she thought.

Seedling by seedling, and tray by tray, they moved across the young woodland, until the sun was high and Teresa stood, wiping her brow, her trowel hanging at her side.

“How are you two getting on?” she called.

“A few more to go,” Jyn called back, sitting back on her heels and reaching into her bag for her water again.

“Same,” came Cassian’s voice from some way off to her side.

“Ok, wow…” Terena picked her way across her neatly-planted rows of green to him, and Jyn crawled over. “I thought we had a day’s worth here!” Terena looked thrilled as she peered down at Cassian’s work.

He grinned up at her from the ground, shading his eyes with his hand. “We can do more, if there’s more to do.”

She grinned back. “Sounds good. What do you reckon, Jyn?”

Jyn straightened up and stretched. “Let’s get it done!” She was as surprised by the enthusiasm in her voice as the other two looked to be.

“Right!” Terena said, recovering and clapping her hands together. “Let’s go back for lunch and load up the trailer again then.”

“I don’t mind working on,” Jyn said. She crouched and touched one of the young plants gently. “I’m not that hungry.”

Cassian made a noise of agreement.

Terena raised her eyebrows. “Well - ok -” She seemed uncertain. “I don’t want you to starve but -”

“No, really,” Cassian interrupted with what, even to Jyn, sounded like sincerity. “You go.”

“We’re not used to a good breakfast, I guess,” added Jyn.

Terena hesitated, pulling at one of her plaits for a moment, then shrugged. “Ok! Well, I’ll bring something back with me just in case. Don’t want either of you passing out on me.”

With a haul on the trailer, and the hiss of its wheels through tall grass, she set off away from them. They watched her go, until finally Cassian put his hand into the ground and pushed himself up with a grimace. He staggered.

“Kriff,” Jyn muttered, leaping to her feet and putting her arm around him as he stood. He didn’t protest but leaned against her for a moment, head low. “You can’t just ignore this, Cassian,” she said gently.

He took a breath and straightened slowly. “Just been down too long,” he hissed through his teeth, putting his arm over her shoulders.

“Ok,” she answered, not letting go. “Ok, ok.” What would arguing accomplish?

He rested his weight on her a little and squinted out toward the mountains. “Do you like it here?”

She nodded. “It’s beautiful. I’m not sure Terena knows what to make of me just yet.”

Cassian’s hand on her shoulder tightened a little.

“What about you?” she asked.

He looked down at her, and the smile that lined his eyes, she was sure, was real. “It’s fine.”

Jyn rested her head into him and watched the young saplings bend in a moment’s breeze. “I’m glad you came.” Mistake or otherwise, she found she meant it. After a moment, Cassian let his arm drop from her shoulders and she stepped back. “You’re going to be fine,” she said, kneeling down to look at the seedlings, and wishing she meant that part too.

She reached for his half-empty tray and began to work, and at length he pushed up his sleeves and knelt opposite her, and they worked along the row together. When the tray was empty, she helped him up, and they moved over to what remained to do in her own sector.

The sun had passed overhead when Jyn sat back and watched Cassian’s hands pressing down gently on the earth.

“How long did you know him?” The words came from her unbidden, and his fingers stilled in the soft soil. “Kay…” she whispered, not looking up, not wanting to see his face, wanting to claw the question back inside.

There was a pause, the early afternoon heat drawing around them like a cord.

“Years,” came the answer at last, rough as calico. “Years.”

Jyn bit the inside of her cheek and raised her eyes to look at him. There was no pretence in his expression, now; his mouth was tight, his brows drawn in, and he seemed to stare at the delicate stem between his hands without seeing it.

“Sorry,” she said uselessly. He met her gaze, mute and helpless, and shook his head.

“It’s not -” He broke off and rubbed his forearm across his face, then reached for the last tray, brisk action once more. “Thanks.”

Jyn followed suit, shuffling down the row a little. “Mm - Cassian -” She aimed for a conversational tone - “How old are you, actually?”

“Twenty-six,” he said, a catch still in his voice, and Jyn snapped her head around to stare at him.  _ Twenty-six? _ But then she remembered - sometimes - when he smiled -

“I’m -”

“Twenty-one, I know,” he smiled. “And really tough to track down,  _ Liana _ .”

She shuddered. “Don’t.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s - have you ever been in prison?”

He hesitated for a moment, then chuckled gently. “I was at the Partisans’ leisure for an hour or so once… Hospitable people.”

She picked up a lump of soil and flung it at him. “Oh but  _ your  _ lot, by contrast...”

He smiled at her, that young look again, then quickly turned back to his work and tried to brush the earth from his shirt. It streaked down his side in dark brown, and he either didn’t notice or didn’t mind.

By the time they finished, Terena still hadn’t returned.

“Want to go and meet her by the bridge?”

Jyn dusted off her hands and nodded, standing up and reaching for him. Again, he didn’t object to her help, and they set off between the fragile young trees, stepping carefully over the newly-planted shoots, then through the grass with its rustling resistance against their legs, to the bridge, and the stream, and the dark, round stones gleaming beneath the water.

Jyn shuffled herself down the bank and trailed her fingers in the stream, watching the light crease and catch around them. Cassian pulled up a handful of grass and dropped it from the bridge, blade by blade, into the water, watching each one swirl and sweep away impassively.

“How are you doing, Jyn?” he asked eventually.

She squinted up at his shape against the bright sky. “I’m alright,” she said.

“Who was it? On Rion?”

“Oh…” She pulled her hand out of the water and shook the droplets off lazily, ignoring the chill in her stomach. “One of Saw’s old cadre. Saw handed him off to the Empire when he realised he’d worked out who I was. Or maybe he hadn’t, maybe Saw just thought so. It got so it was hard to tell.” She quirked an eyebrow and gave a wry smirk she didn’t feel the humour behind.

Cassian regarded her curiously for a moment, then walked back over the bridge and carefully inched down the bank to sit beside her.

“Saw was just protecting you, then,” he said.

“Always,” Jyn answered pragmatically. “In his way.”

And without warning, the loss was wider and louder than she had had time to feel it before: panic and confusion and her father’s face had drowned it out, until now, until this, the first time she had witnessed for his clumsy care. She felt her face fold up in wet heat, felt her arms pull in close, and Cassian leant in a little, his side against hers. But this was wrong, it was  _ wrong _ , he shouldn’t comfort her when he gave such little show of his own weight. Then she felt him release a long and shaky breath, and perhaps he, in his own quiet dialect, was simply also lost beside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I've slowed down a bit on this of late - a fair few things have taken priority recently (not least my brother's wedding, which was great) but I promise to pick up the pace again from next month and thanks SO much for sticking with me


	6. Feed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so, so sorry it's taken me so long to update, despite my promises of updating more after my brother's wedding. (It went brilliantly and was a lovely, loving day). I feel so bad for leaving you all hanging because your enthusiasm and encouragement on this fic has been an absolute joy to me! So here we go - an update... and with dearest thanks for your patience xx

Jyn felt Cassian give her shoulder a light tap and she looked up see Terena heading for them. Jyn scooted down the bank and scooped up a handful of the clear water, throwing it into her face.

“Hotter than I expected today!” she excused herself feebly. Her act was nothing to Cassian’s; immediately, he was unrecognisable again: bright, helpful, winning.

“We thought we’d come and meet you,” he told her with synthetic cheer that knifed Jyn.

Their host didn’t seem to detect anything strange. She slapped his shoulder gratefully and stepped aside from the trailer, accepting the offer she thought she’d been given. He gave it a tug and winced minutely.

“Hey, Cassian, I’ll take that -” Jyn began urgently; he slammed her into silence with an unvocalised snarl that Terena, behind him, couldn’t have seen. Contorted with rage, or pain, or both, he barely resembled Cassian at all. And then, just as suddenly, the look was hidden and that cheerful voice came again:

“No, definitely my turn!” He smiled at Terena over his shoulder. “Let’s get planting.” And then, to Jyn, a new look - apologetic; plaintive. She searched for a way to say she understood, but he'd already gone on ahead.

“You have no idea how long this would have taken me alone,” Terena enthused to Jyn as they pushed back through the long grass. “It's going to make such a difference.”

“I guess three times as long,” answered Jyn.

Terena blinked at her, and Jyn realised her response had been more caustic than she had meant it to be. “More than,” said Terena. “I have to feed the animals in the evening and so I have to break off to do that, and with your help that won't take so long either, so I won't have to break off so early… So -” she waved her hands vaguely in the direction of the animal pens and paddocks at the end of the trail on the other side of the bridge.

“So not just faster but more time,” Jyn said.

“Exactly.”

“What are your animals?” Cassian panted from ahead of them, raising his voice over the rattling of trays in the the trailer.

“Couple of porinax,” she called back, “and a Freegian gam. You'll see them tonight.”

Jyn had seen holoimages of gams before; strong and elegant beasts a little like the draft horses she’d seen in her life, but broader backed, from what she remembered. Porinax didn’t ring any bells, though, but she couldn’t be bothered to ask, and instead simply watched her feet moving through the grass behind the wheels of the trailer.

They made even faster progress over the afternoon, familiar now with the process, and the star had barely begun its final descent toward the horizon when Terena was tamping down the last of her young sidoxia, and Jyn made her way across to Cassian. He looked up at her sharply, but she placed herself between him and Terena as she helped him up; busy as she was with her last plant, she didn’t notice.

Jyn felt Cassian’s hand tighten on her arm for a moment before he let go, and she avoided his eyes. Instead, she bent down to collect his empty tray and handed it to him, then headed along the row to gather up the rest, picking her way between the seedlings and saplings as delicately as she could. The yellowing late afternoon light made the copper edges of the leaves flare, ruffled gently by her passing. Behind her, Cassian was making his way across to Terena, drinking from his flask, and when she finished collecting and went to join them at the trailer, Terena was in the middle of explaining about the lake.

“- not too deep but I haven’t really examined it too closely, been too involved with the -” She waved at the trees and roughly toward the animal pens, and as she did so, she spotted Jyn approaching with armfuls of trays. “Oh, thanks, Jyn, that’s…”

Jyn essayed a smile as she dropped them into the trailer. “So - the gaf?”

“Yeah, come and meet Pooko!”

Jyn bit her lip to hold back a laugh; Cassian’s came freely. “Pooko?”

Terena shrugged. “I dunno, I’m rubbish with naming things. She just got Pooko because I read the name in a story once.”

Pooko, it turned out, was a name that strangely suited the gaf. By the time they had crossed back over the bridge and headed up the track to the animal pens, the shadows were long, and the low light that sprang across the plain lit the animal in glorious gold, the twin lines of flowing hair on her flanks seeming almost to glow. She turned as she heard them, and skipped her back legs excitedly at the sight of Terena, but skittered away a little.

“It’s ok, girl,” Terena soothed, leaning on the fence. “They’re friends. They’re my new colleagues.” She turned to them. “Hold on here, a second. I’ll go and get some treats for her.”

She disappeared into the wooden building on the edge of the paddock, leaving Jyn and Cassian leaning on the fence.

“She’s smaller than I expected,” said Jyn after a pause. “I thought gafs were - I thought you had to reach up just to touch their backs. She’s barely higher than I am.”

Cassian rested his elbows on the fence and propped up his chin. “Maybe Freegian gafs are smaller.”

“Pygmy gaf,” agreed Jyn with a smile.

He laughed, still watching Pooko. She was eyeing them warily, stepping sideways towards them and away again. “Ever seen porinax?”

Jyn shook her head.

“You’ll like them,” he promised her. “They’re -”

“Treats!” called Terena, reappearing with a small pail and plonking it down between them. Jyn looked down - the pail contained two writhing creatures roughly the size of her hand, flat, segmented and shining black. “Cercorastils,” Terena explained. “They’re endemic to Freegia but they breed pretty well here; I’ve got a tank full of them. Go on, take one.”

Jyn glanced at Cassian and lifted the pail, reaching into it and closing her hand around one of the creatures. It wriggled in her hand with a scratching sound and she felt dozens of tiny legs on the underside struggle against her fingers. Cassian laughed again at the look on her face. She was starting to learn the different notes in his laughter when it was unfeigned.

“Yeah, they don’t bite but they ooze a bit when they’re anxious,” chuckled Terena. “Go on, hold it out and click your tongue.”

She did as instructed, and Pooko’s ears flicked back and forth uncertainly.

“I don’t think she likes me,” said Jyn, trying to ignore the squirming, tickling sensation in her hand, and the  _ something  _ that was starting to dribble down her arm. With her other hand, she shook the bucket at Cassian. “Go on…”

He reached into the pail stoically, not breaking eye contact with Jyn. She watched his mouth twitch at the corner as his grip closed around the creature, and snorted.

“Grim, isn’t it,” she teased.

“It’s fine,” he said, the twitch broadening to a poorly-suppressed smile as he turned back to Pooko and held out his protesting offering.

Jyn felt the itch of Terena’s curious eyes on them, and clicked her tongue again at the gaf impatiently. The cercorastil in her hand intensified its wriggling; Pooko ruffled the lines of hair on her flanks nervously, then took a cautious step nearer.

“Come on, girl,” coaxed Terena, and Pooko edged closer and stretched out her neck to sniff the wriggling bug in Cassian’s hand, then in Jyn’s. “Just hold it still,” Terena murmured.

Finally, the animal closed its blunt teeth on one end of the treat Jyn held with a sickening crunch and tugged it from her grasp; she tossed it into the air and caught it in her mouth with another crunch, and chewed appreciatively. The creature disappeared in a wriggling mess, and Pooko eagerly took the second from Cassian’s hand and repeated the process. Jyn wiped her hand and forearm on her shirt with a grimace.

Pooko returned and headbutted her hopefully.

“Nuh-uh, no more,” she told the gaf in a low voice, tentatively rubbing its nose. Pooko, disappointed, turned her attention to Cassian, who stepped back uncertainly with a look to Terena.

“Ah, she doesn’t bite,” Terena said, reaching forward and patting her long face. “Well, people, anyway. She’s easily bought. Come on, I’ll show you the porinax.”

They followed her into the low wooden building, and Jyn was hit by a warm, sweet, musty smell, and high-pitched snuffling sounds. It was dim inside after the bright glow of the evening, though the last of the light pushed through the cracks in the wooden wall in short, broken lines of fire. The far wall of the barn was stacked high with sacks of what Jyn assumed must be food supplies, and to the left, under the sloping roof, was the source of the sound. Terena gestured over the low dividing wall, built in rough stone, and Cassian put his arm across Jyn’s back, drawing her with him to peer over and into the enclosure.

She counted five of them: rounded, snorting, four-legged animals about the length of her forearm, with short snouts and pointed, floppy ears; rough hair lay along their backs in warm pinkish-brown, some with paler patches, and slender, scaly tails about half their length again, ending in a tuft of fine, vibrant blue fur. At the realisation of the humans’ presence, they turned as one, gazing up in sudden silence with shining black eyes.

“Told you you’d like them,” Cassian said quietly, and she looked up at him in delight. His gaze was on her, and she was suddenly heavily aware of his arm against her back. Her smile faltered with the sudden jerk in her stomach; he dropped his arm quickly and swallowed, looking back to their patient, hopeful audience.

“So the porinax are from Freegi too,” Terena announced, handing them each a small pouch. “Here, just -” She pulled a handful of dark brown pellets from the pouch and threw them loosely into the pen in demonstration. The porinax immediately broke rank and descended into chaos, squealing excitedly as they snaffled the pellets from the ground, their blue tufts wiggling straight up in the air.

“They’re pretty ingenuitive little critters,” she continued as Jyn and Cassian scattered their pellets handful by handful. Jyn chewed her lip and tried to focus on what she was being told. “This food is a combination of synthesised proteins that pretty much composite what they would have been eating in their natural environment but they get a bit bored.”

“How do you mean?” Jyn asked, surprised at her own interest.

Terena reached across Cassian and put her hand on Jyn’s wrist.

Jyn flinched.

“Sorry.” Terena pulled back quickly. “Just - sorry, just… scatter a bit more loosely, like…” She demonstrated again.

Jyn felt ridiculous for her reaction, and pushed down an irrational flare of anger. She took a breath and mimicked the motion as best she could.

“Yeah, good.” Terena scratched her nose for a moment uncertainly, then went on. “So yeah, back home they’d forage for all these different things but this is just - ‘here it is, fellas’. I need to set up some kind of stimulation exercise for them because honestly, they’re smarter than they look and they’re going to cause havoc in the name of entertainment sometime. Cute, though, right?”

The little spinney of appreciative blue tufts was dispersing as the porinax moved apart to investigate the corners of their pen for extra pellets. Success in the endeavour was marked by each with a whinnying squeak, failure with a snort of disappointment.

“That’s enough for tonight,” Terena said. She took the empty pouch from Cassian and held her hand out to Jyn, who passed hers back without meeting her eyes. “Dinnertime for us, I think!”

She set the pouches back on the pile of sacks at the end of the building and led them back out into the warm, fresh air of the evening.

 

\--

 

Again, the smooth stone wall at her back through her thin nightshirt; again, the soft damp grass beneath her behind, between her fingers, under her toes. A deep lungful of twilight air, still warm from the day; she counted to eight as she released it, then sixteen the next.

Dinner had been an unfamiliar, cheerful affair. Cassian’s warmth had seemed less feigned, buoyed up, perhaps, by the success of the day, and Terena had explained in her enthusiastic and slightly vague way the various activities that she had been putting off since Neeni’s departure. They’d chopped ingredients together, cooked another hearty meal, and Jyn had tried her best to add to the conversation. She wished there was some way of knowing the time; what time was it polite to excuse herself and seek the solitude of her room.

“What did you do before?” Cassian had asked.

Terena had paused in sawing the bread and scratched her chin with her wrist. “Uh, got in trouble, mainly. Graduated from Iurador Republican Academy and decided to spend my time making a bit of noise about the Empire. But, uh -” She went back to sawing the loaf. “They prefer their pacifists quiet…”

“My father used to demonstrate,” Cassian had said conversationally. Jyn had looked up in surprise. Somehow, Cassian’s having a family wasn’t a concept that had ever really occurred to her. He was so naturally remote, it seemed to her.

“Yeah, doesn’t achieve much,” Terena had answered. “I quit too when I had to make a run for it.”

“He didn’t run.” His tone was so pragmatic, so uncomplicated, that it had taken Jyn a moment to register the implication.

She drew in a deep breath of the outside air as she remembered the exchange, and pulled up a handful of grass from beside her, sprinkling it to catch the tiny breeze. So they’d both lost their fathers to this war. She to the Alliance’s impetuous paranoia, and he to - to whom? Had they been the Empire then? Or still just the Republic? How long ago?

The nauseous memory of their fight after her father’s death crashed over her; Cassian’s face electric with emotion - six years old.

She’d been so caught up in loss and rage she’d barely heard him. Six… younger even than she’d been.

“Sorry,” was all Terena had said, shrugging as she brought the bread over to the table. “Pacifism’s a strange thing, I think, isn’t it - you can not do anything at all and you’re basically backing the bullies that way. It’s a side of its own. So I fight my own way and this is my fight. Plants!”

“I like that,” Jyn had said. Cassian hadn’t answered.

She did like it, she thought, pulling her knees up again. She didn’t care to examine too closely whether or not it really counted as fighting at all; it was enough for Terena and it could be enough for her, and it was enough to keep Cassian here for as long as he needed. It had some sort of value.

Cassian. Cassian, who had steered the conversation onto the meal, and to whom Terena had been delighted to explain the ingredients. It was all grown in the patch they’d passed that morning, she said.

“Do you grow caprillium?” he’d asked. “It’d work well in this, I think.”

So after dinner, Terena had offered to show them around the garden, and Jyn had declined, opting instead to tidy up. She could hear them through her window at first, voices from the back of the house in the half-dark, words indistinct, an exchange of interests. Still more she didn’t know about him.

At length, they’d come back inside, and Jyn had slipped out of the window again when all was quiet. The feel of the ground under her bare feet was refreshing and soothing; she gripped the windowsill for a moment, then took a few steps to her left, and before she knew it she was around the corner of the house, past the door, the smooth white walls mauve in the twilight, and further round again, past the kitchen window, past the gate to the track - would Pooko be asleep in her paddock already? - and softly, with the textures of grass and soil and pebble beneath her soles, around to the garden, now empty.

The canes and trellises were silhouetted in inky spires, angular contrasts with the rounded, hapless shape of what, beneath the cover, was Endy. Above the tangle of leafy rounds near the wall was a window, and Jyn could hear Terena’s voice. She caught her breath and crouched.

“-be here all that long at this rate; no sign of any real trouble with him if you ask me, which obviously, you do. Your other one’s the one I’m worried about. Anyway, I’ll keep you updated. Uh, this is, uh - evening, sometime - oh, 15th hour, just gone. Shouldn’t worry too much. So, report… signing off… you have to let me know what I’m meant to say for this kind of thing.”

Then the sound of a holorecorder being switched off, and a sigh, and finally a creak; the movement of sheets. Jyn’s heart raced. She suddenly remembered Cassian’s curious words:  _ it has to be _ . It had to be alright. Of course. She’d been an idiot to think the Alliance would simply set down one of their best agents without monitoring his welfare somehow. Of course Terena was feeding them updates.

She had crouched there for what seemed an age, until she was sure Terena was asleep, and then moved off again as quietly as she could. Further on around the house, crawling underneath Cassian’s window and back, at last, to her own, where she now sat, staring again at the stars as they grew brighter in the darkening sky, and wondering how long this could last.


End file.
